Iolando Lourenço
Reporter Agência Brasil

Brasília - Adman Marcos Valério says that he did pay Duda Mendonça's ad agency for services to the PT, but he denied that any payments were made through fiscal paradises in the Caribbean. Yesterday Mendonça made the Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva government tremble when he declared that he received money for his work in the 2002 PT campaigns through a company he had opened in the Bahamas, which is a fiscal and financial crime.

Adman Valerio claims that he paid adman Mendonça US$6.6 million (R$15 million) in checks (a total of 22 of them) and cash.

As for the Bahamas account, Valerio denies he had anything to do with it. "I never advised anyone, much less Duda Mendonça, someone much older and more experienced than myself, to open an account abroad." Valerio added that he never transferred money to Mendonça through accounts abroad.

Valerio says he has documentary proof of all the payments he made, when they were made and where they were made. He says he can prove the origin of the money and has receipts from his firm. And then he got something off his chest: "I have been used and now they are spitting me out. It is much easier to accuse a small businessman from Minas Gerais than the famous Duda Mendonça."

Translator:Allen Bennett