3 Aug 2012
Last updated during 00:58 GMT
The event during a Supreme Court in Brasilia was televised and carried live on a court’s channel
Brazil’s Supreme Court has non-stop a hearing of 38 people in a crime box that rocked a supervision of then-President Lula, in 2005.
The defendants are indicted of impasse in a intrigue that used open supports to compensate bloc partners to support a government’s agenda.
Among those indicted are former heading members of Lula’s Workers’ Party (PT). All reject a charges.
At a time, Lula denied believe of a intrigue and pronounced he felt betrayed.
The case, already dubbed a “trial of a century” by a Brazilian media, involves 38 former members of a PT and other domestic parties, supervision officials, business people and bankers.
They face a operation of charges including money-laundering, corruption, and usurpation bribes.
It is being listened by a 11 Supreme Court justices sitting in Brasilia.
Ahead of a proceedings, a Attorney General Roberto Gurgel sent a judges a note describing a box as “the many adventurous and vast crime intrigue and piracy of open supports ever seen in Brazil”.
Reputation
The liaison was famous as a “mensalao” or “big monthly allowance”.
President Lula was re-elected a year after a liaison surfaced
Members of a PT are purported to have paid domestic allies some $10,000 (£6,400) any each month to safeguard they voted by a government’s bulletin in Congress.
Prosecutors lay that a income was diverted from a promotion budgets of state-owned companies.
The liaison pennyless in 2005 during a initial tenure of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, heading to a rain of several comparison members of a government.
These enclosed Jose Dirceu, who was Lula’s arch of staff. He was transposed by Dilma Rousseff, who went on to be inaugurated as boss in 2010. She is not concerned in a case.
Mr Dirceu’s counsel has pronounced there was no “so-called vote-buying”.
“There is no explanation of any use of open money. Dozens of witnesses definitely contend that Dirceu had no believe of a loans and (money) transfers,” Jose Luiz Oliveira Lima told a journal O Globo.
The trial, that is approaching to final a month, takes place only a few weeks before critical metropolitan elections.
Analysts contend it could taint a repute of Lula, who served as boss from 2003 to 2010, and who stays hugely renouned in Brazil.
But while a PT and a allies are in a dock, a purported hurtful practices expel a disastrous light on a whole domestic establishment, correspondents say.