Calls for the impeachment of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil's president, are likely to be renewed this week after the former secretary of his leftwing Workers' party (PT) suggested in a newspaper interview on Sunday that the president knew about a corruption scheme allegedly paying bribes to legislators in exchange for their support in Congress.
Silvio Pereira, who resigned as party secretary last July over his role in the affair, stopped short of accusing the president of direct involvement in the scheme. But he listed Mr Lula da Silva as one of four senior figures who controlled decision-making in the party during the time the alleged payments took place. Two of the four - José Dirceu, formerly the president's chief minister, and José Genoino, former PT president - were fired from their party jobs. Mr Dirceu resigned his ministry and was expelled from Congress last year.
Opposition leaders jumped on the interview as one more indication that Mr Lula da Silva, who has denied any knowledge of the alleged scheme, shared responsibility for corruption in the PT and in other parties supporting his government.
Previous attempts to implicate the president have fallen flat. A Senate inquiry into the affair tried to call for evidence and open the bank records of a friend of the president who allegedly repaid a debt to the PT on the president's behalf using money from advertising agencies at the centre of the scheme, but has been blocked by the Supreme Court.
Nor has the opposition been able to make anything of investments of up to R$15m ($7.3m, €5.7m, £3.9m) made by a telephone company under public concession in an electronic game company owned by the president's son.
Following publication of the interview on Sunday, leaders of the inquiry said they would call Mr Pereira to give evidence. "If he confirms everything he said in the interview, the road to impeachment will be inexorably open," said José Agripino Maia, Senate leader of the centre-right opposition PFL.
Leaders of the OAB, the national lawyers' society, will meet on Monday to decide whether to open impeachment proceedings against the president. Luiz Flávio Borges D'Urso, OAB president, said: "These new declarations will have weight in our decision. They reinforce the idea of impeachment."
Nevertheless, government leaders reacted with relief to the interview. Mr Pereira said Marcos Valério, owner of the advertising agencies allegedly running the scheme, had failed in attempts to involve a number of middle-market banks. "[Mr Pereira] showed that Marcos Valério did not manage to pursue his plans," said Gilberto Carvalho, a close aide to the president, "and that the government never agreed that he should do anything of the sort."
