Informants disagree, and one of them exonerates Gleisi.
Hit hard during last year's election campaign with accusations that she received funds from money launderer Alberto Youssef when she was elected senator in 2010, former minister Gleisi Hoffmann, of the PT party, is receiving belated redress; in testimony given in the Lava Jato investigation, cooperating witness Rafael Ângulo, who allegedly delivered funds for Youssef, stated that he had no knowledge of any fact related to Senator Gleisi; according to Youssef, Ângulo was the bearer of the money; conflicting versions from cooperating witnesses have been common in Lava Jato; former minister Antonio Palocci was also mentioned by Paulo Roberto Costa, a claim later contradicted by Youssef.
Paraná 247 - In the second half of last year, when she was facing the current governor Beto Richa in the race for the Iguaçu Palace, Senator Gleisi Hoffmann (PT-PR) received a fatal blow to her candidacy. In one of the leaks from Lava Jato, she was accused of having received R$ 1 million from the scheme of money launderer Alberto Yousseff when she ran for and was elected to the Senate in 2010.
Now, with the election over and Richa re-elected, even amidst an acute political and social crisis in Paraná, Gleisi has just been exonerated by one of the cooperating witnesses in the Lava Jato investigation, who contradicted Youssef's version of events. This witness is Rafael Ângulo, who allegedly delivered funds for the money launderer. In his testimony to Lava Jato, he stated that he never made any payments to the senator and former Chief of Staff of the Dilma government.
The news was first reported by columnist Ilimar Franco, in the note below:
Truth and lies
The testimony given by cooperating witness Rafael Ângulo on Wednesday at the Federal Police contradicted the testimony of cooperating witness Alberto Youssef. Youssef, in one of his various statements, claimed that Ângulo delivered R$ 1 million to the campaign of Senator Gleisi Hoffmann (PT-PR). Ângulo simply denied having any knowledge of this fact.
In interviews with 247, Senator Gleisi Hoffmann stated that her inclusion in Lava Jato was aimed not only at undermining her candidacy for governor of Paraná, but also at bringing the scandal closer to President Dilma during the 2014 presidential race, since she was Minister of the Civil House for most of her first term.
This is not the first time there have been significant contradictions in the testimonies of informants. In the Lava Jato investigation, former minister Antonio Palocci was also mentioned by Paulo Roberto Costa, a statement later contradicted by Youssef, in a case involving the collection of R$ 2 million for President Dilma Rousseff's campaign.