Brazil court considers graft case

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Source: BBC

Brazil's Supreme Court has begun deliberations on whether 40 people have a case to answer over one of the country's biggest corruption scandals.

They are accused of running an illegal scheme through which the governing party financed election campaigns and bribed legislators from other parties.

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The corruption hearing centres on a scandal known in Brazil as "mensalao" (the big monthly payment) because it relates to payments said to have been made each month in 2003 and 2004 to opposition politicians, to support the policies of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's government.

The president always denied any knowledge of the alleged scheme, but the controversy overshadowed much of the last two years of his first term of office.

Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6959806.stm