Ah, some of those charming politicians....

I was hoping this story, which broke here in Brazil yesterday, would come out in English, and it has: Paulo Maluf, perceived as one of the most corrupt politicians here in Brazil, has been charged with inflating prices and receiving kickbacks from bankers. However, while Maluf has faced such charges before, this time offers a first: the New York City prosecutors have charged him, due to the fact that the funds from these kickbacks are in New York banks.

Maluf is notable to Brazilian history for two things. He was the pro-dictatorship party's presidential candidate as the dictatorship exited in 1985, losing ultimately to a coalition formed by Tancredo Neves's leftist-center coalition, with support by a rightist party (today's Partido Frente Liberal) that splintered away from the pro-dictatorship part when Maluf won the candidacy. This fragmentation within Brazil's right ultimately led to Neves's victory in the 1985 presidential election; unfortunately, Neves was stricken ill and died before he could ever take office, leaving center-right vice president José Sarney to assume office.

However, he is probably even more known for his corruption. While Maluf continues to proclaim his innocence, it rings hollow. Maluf excels at corruption. When he was first governor of São Paulo, he created a state-run oil agency and proceeded to spend 500 million dollars looking for oil and coming up with nothing (the corruption charges came from accusations that he received money from this state-led company). Another example of his..."qualities" is the Ayrton Senna tunnel in São Paulo, which ultimately cost more to make than the Chunnel and went $400 million US dollars over budget, again with accusations that Maluf received kickbacks from contractors. He has been convicted several times of corruption (though only once was the conviction "final" - as I've mentioned before, the justice system here is not the same as in the U.S.), yet this did not stop him not only from being elected to the House of Deputies here this past year, but from becoming the right's leader . Despite his victory, however, his name is synonymous with extremely dirty dealings. There is even a verb in Portuguese now, "malufar", which literally means "to steal public money".

It will be interesting to see if anything happens with this. There hasn't been much nationalist outcry against the American-based indictment here, which is rather telling (let us not forget that, when England put Pinochet under house arrest in 1998, all of Chile was outraged, declaring that he should be tried in Chile if he was to be tried). I doubt much will come of this, but still, one can't help but hope that Maluf gets his in one way or another.