Juliana Cézar Nunes
Reporter - Agência Brasil

Brasília - The financial director of the SMP&B firm, Simone Vasconcelos, left Federal Police headquarters last night (1) after a deposition that lasted nearly eight hours. Vasconcelos works for the advertising executive, Marcos Valério, and her name appears in Rural Bank documents turned over to the Joint Congressional Post Office Investigation Committee as one of the people who withdrew the largest sums from the accounts of Valério's firms. Since 2003 she had presumably been authorized to withdraw around US$ 2.33 million (R$ 5.5 million).

She gave the Federal Police a list containing the names of the people to whom she delivered the funds she had withdrawn. Most of the withdrawals were made at the Rural Bank branch in the Brasília Shopping mall, in Brasília. The prosecutor for the Republic in the Federal District, Raquel Branquinho, accompanied part of the deposition and says that Vasconcelos was prepared to explain each payment.

"She sustains Valério's thesis that they were loans received from the Rural Bank and distributed according to indications made by Delúbio Soares (furloughed treasurer of the PT). She says they were not monthly allowances [paid to individual legislators]. But loans from one party to another," the prosecutor relates. According to Branquinho, Vasconcelos insisted that she handled only part of the loans. Considering the total amount that Valério says he lent to the PT, Vasconcelos says that other parts of the payment were passed along directly by directors of the SMP&B and DNA agencies.

Translation: David Silberstein