Ivan Richard        Reporter Agência Brasil

Brasília – An opposition party, the PPS, has announced that it will request investigations by the Office of the Chief Prosecutor (“Procuradoria-Geral da República”) and the Ethics Counsel at the Chamber of Deputies of charges of corruption and misappropriation of public funds by the former minister of Tourism, Pedro Novais, who resigned yesterday, September 14.

“The idea is to go beyond punishing only civil servants who allocate ministry funds to companies that do not exist. The former minister is also responsible. It is a fact that in April and May he was informed of irregularities and did nothing,” said Bueno. [note: “punishing only civil servants” refers to the arrest of more than 30 employees at the Ministry of Tourism by Federal Police in a sting called Operation Voucher involving misappropriation of public funds for a phantom (“fantasma”) project in the state of Amapa]. According to the leader of the party in the Chamber of Deputies, Rubens Bueno (PPS-PR), the former minister can be accused of “prevaricação”, that is, a breach of trust or abuse in the exercise of public office.

The leader of another opposition party, Alvaro Dias (PSDB-PR), also came out in favor of a further inquiry into the activities of Novais. “The resignation is more reason to move ahead with an investigation. Everything must be examined to find out who was responsible and, ideally, achieve a restitution of misused public funds,” he declared.

Charges of inappropriate behavior and improper administration against Novais have appeared regularly in the press. He is suspected of embezzling R$1 million through an earmark (“emenda parlamentar”) for the construction of bridge in a small town, Barra do Corda, in his home state of Maranhão. The money went to a non-existent company (“empresa fantasma”).

This week the newspaper, Folha de S. Paulo, reported that his wife uses an employee of the Chamber of Deputies as a private chauffeur and that the salary of a maid Novais and his wife have is paid by the legislature also.

Meanwhile, the leader of the main government party in the Senate, Humberto Costa (PT-PE), rebuffed criticism of president Dilma Rousseff for waiting too long to fire Novais. According to Costa, the president just gave the former minister time to defend himself and when that was no longer possible, due to the successive charges against him that made his permanence unsustainable, he left.

“The president has acted in a consistent manner in these cases [since June, five ministers have left the government, four of them accused of corruption]. At first, the benefit of the doubt, a vote of confidence and time for defense. When the defense is found to be inadequate, political conditions for the minister to remain in the government no longer exist,” said Costa. [note: in a Brazilian version of the deep frisk, shortly after Novais was appointed minister, at the beginning of the year, it was discovered that he paid for a party at a motel (in Brazil motels are hot sheets hotels) with public money. The money was restituted by Novais and the matter allowed to cool off]

Allen Bennett – translator/editor The News in English – content modified

Link - PPS quer ver Novais investigado por prevaricação

Link - Ministério Público vai apurar se Novais participou de fraudes reveladas pela Operação Voucher (Débora Zampier)