Quote:

SAO PAULO, Brazil - Brazil's governing party vowed Monday to file a libel suit against the country's leading weekly news magazine for reporting that Cuba illegally helped finance President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's 2002 electoral campaign.

In a statement posted on its Web site, the Workers' Party said it would sue newsweekly Veja for slander and libel. The magazine reported in this week's editions that the party received up to $3 million through a Cuban diplomat for the campaign, a donation that would violate Brazil's electoral law.

The report said Silva's electoral committee received the funds in October and September 2002 through a former Cuban diplomat identified as Sergio Cervantes.

Both the Brazilian government and the Cuban Embassy have denied the report.

Veja officials could not immediately be reached for comment on the party's decision to sue.

The magazine based its report on interviews with two former aides of Finance Minister Antonio Palocci, including Rogerio Buratti, who recently accused Palocci of taking kickbacks from contractors when he was mayor of the city of Ribeirao Preto in the 1990s. The aids said they learned of the alleged Cuban funds from a third Palocci aid who has since died.

Silva, who became Brazil's first elected leftist president in 2002, is a longtime friend of Cuban President
Fidel Castro.

Opposition parties said they would call for an investigation into the magazine's report.

The allegations came five months after a corruption scandal involving high-ranking members of the Workers Party threw the country into a political crisis.

In June, former Congressman Roberto Jefferson, a former government ally, testified that the party financed campaigns illegally and bribed legislators for their support in Congress.

The party acknowledged irregularities in its campaign financing, but Jefferson was later expelled from Congress for not proving the corruption allegations.

Silva has not been linked to the corruption scandal and has not said whether he will run for re-election in 2006.



Yahoo news