Mensalão scandal
Despite continued additional resignations, in October the scandal died down somewhat as Brazil held a contentious referendum on a banning gun sales, an initiative soundly rejected by voters.
[6] On September 18, 2004, Brazilian weekly magazine Veja printed a cover story entitled "Scandal: PT's buyout of PTB".
[citation needed] On September 24, 2004, the Rio de Janeiro newspaper Jornal do Brasil published an article citing Veja which also said that former Minister of Communications Miro Teixeira had revealed the monthly payments to the Ministry of Public Prosecution.
[citation needed] On June 3, 2005 the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo published a story saying that the government was tying funds for various projects to support for the creation of the CPI.
[citation needed] Because of these allegations, part of the government's base joined the opposition to support the creation of a Parliamentary Commission of Investigation.
On June 6, Folha de S.Paulo published an interview with Jefferson claiming that Delúbio Soares, treasurer of the Workers' Party, made monthly payments of R$30,000 to certain Congressional deputies, to influence them to vote with the government.
According to Jefferson, businessman Marcos Valério, owner of the advertising agencies SMPB [pt] and DNA, which had large government contracts, operated the scheme.
José Dirceu, once a leftist student leader who organized against the right-wing military dictatorship after it took power in a 1964 coup, was arrested in 1968, then released at the demand of the kidnappers of the US ambassador.
[3] In early July 2005, an advisor to a Congressional deputy and brother of Workers’ Party President José Genoíno, was stopped at an airport with $100,000 in his underwear and additional funds in his luggage.
[8] Congressional hearings were often marked by fiery rhetoric and emotional outbursts, including numerous incidents of crying by witnesses and Workers' Party deputies.
Despite continued resignations of those implicated, in October the scandal died down somewhat and Brazil had a referendum on gun sales that resulted in a loss for the government's position.
At the end of October, Veja published a new story claiming that the Workers' Party had received illegal campaign funds from Cuba—threatening to re-intensify the scandal once again, though that was not ultimately the case.
[clarification needed] The investigations into Post Office corruption and vote-buying unanimously approved their first joint preliminary report on September 1, 2005.
The report states that as to the charges initially made by deputy Roberto Jefferson (PTB): The report added that several documents had been identified and validated which proved that large sums of money were withdrawn from agencies of the Rural Bank in Brasília and Belo Horizonte, as well as from the bank accounts of the enterprises SMPB [pt] and DNA.
According to the documents, the beneficiaries were federal deputies who received funds in person or through relatives, advisers, or individuals chosen by Marcos Valério.
Due to serial allegations of this kind of operation in many campaigns in 2002, including President Lula's, many believed this CPI could result in a legal and concrete reason to start his impeachment process.
In the first 23 sessions[clarification needed] of the trial the Supreme Court found that misuse of public money and bank loans did occur.
[12][needs update] On 15 September 2012 Veja published a new story alleging that Valério had told friends that former president Lula masterminded the corruption scheme.
[13] On September 17 the court began to examine the primary accusation, which included allegations that Dirceu led of the vote-buying scheme which laundered and then disbursed millions in public and private money to secure votes in Congress from 2003 to 2005.
