Lula to stand trial for corruption

Brazil’s former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva must stand trial for corruption, a judge ruled, after prosecutors accused the popular leftist of masterminding the large-scale plundering of state oil company Petrobras.

The crusading judge behind the Petrobras investigation, Sergio Mora, accepted charges filed last week by prosecutors investigating Lula — making him the highest-profile figure to face trial in a case that has taken down some of the country’s most powerful business executives and politicians.

The charges allege that Lula, 70, received the equivalent of 3.7 million reais (USD 1.1 million) in bribes.

Among the accusations are charges that the former union leader and his wife received a beachside apartment and upgrades to the property from a major construction company, OAS, which was one of the players in the Petrobras scheme.

More broadly, prosecutors last week singled out Lula, who was president during much of the time that Petrobras was being fleeced of billions of dollars, as the scheme’s “supreme commander”.

Lula, who presided over an economic boom from 2003 to 2011, will now go head to head for the first time with Moro.

The crusading judge’s anti-graft investigation, known as Operation Car Wash, has had explosive consequences in Brazil. It may now thwart Lula’s hopes of a political comeback in the 2018 presidential election. It already played a part in ousting the leftist Workers’ Party, which he co-founded.

The once unstoppable party’s 13 years in power ended last month when Lula’s hand-picked successor, Dilma Rousseff, was convicted of budget irregularities in an impeachment trial.