The Blog de Noblat (Globo) has this interesting sideline to the latest mountain of money scandal in Brazil: The national press has been leaking, in dribs and drabs for days now, (leaked police undercover) footage of the federal district governor discussing bribes in smoky back rooms.
One lawmaker is filmed stuffed bundles of banknotes into his socks, while an unidentified newspaper owner is shown stuffing them into his jockey shorts.
On mountain of money scandals as a Latin American literary genre related to magical realism, see also:
- “Mountains of Money”: RCTV and Teleamazonas in Action
- The DEA Alliterates: The Mountain of Money and “The Man Behind the Meth”
- Puta Sacanagem: Sampa Journalists Solicit Bruno Surfistinha of the Federal Police
The latter documents São Paulo journalists fabricating a mountain of money scandal in collusion with an unauthorized leaker inside the federal police, on election eve. The mountain of money that led to the Dossiêgate scandal:
The PT activists arrested with the mountain of money were later released and not charged with wrongdoing. Perhaps that is why President Lula has commented, on the latest mountain of money scandal affecting his opposition, that <images do not speak for themselves.>
Mr. Arruda, the governor in question, is one of those mirabile dictu Tupi tales of political resurrection: After publicly admitting his involvement in a 2001 plot to hack the eletronic vote-recording and display device on the floor of the Brazilian Senate (after initially denying it (above)), he resigned, lay low for a time, and then returned triumphantly to take the governorship of the DF for the PFL-DEM — the party of purest political moralism.
(Brazilian lawmakers vote secretly — another reminder that we are not in Kansas anymore.)
Arruda was being widely touted as a VP candidate for São Paulo governor José Serra in the 2010 presidential elections. Veja magazine recently published a fawning interview touting Arruda as an efficient, upright neoliberal technocrat.
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