LATIN AMERICA : Brazilian Authorities Link Lottery to Political Corruption

Late last month, on a tip from a prisoner, Brazilian federal prosecutor Antonio Carlos Biscaia led police investigators to a handsome mansion tucked away in Bangu, a poor suburb west of downtown Rio.

There they found a small arsenal of guns and ammunition, video poker machines and five sealed jeweler’s vaults. Then they stumbled on a wealth of incriminating documents, including some 50 log books and more than 100 computer diskettes.

Biscaia and his team concluded that the house was headquarters for an illegal lottery known as the jogo do bicho , the animal game. Moreover, he claimed, the cache and paper trail were proof of what had long been whispered here: that the animal lottery was a thin front for a vast underworld of crime including drug trafficking, arms running and money laundering.

Worse, he concluded, leading Brazilians not only knew about the misdeeds but profited directly from them.

Authorities also linked the Rio crime bosses to the international drug trade, tracing regular payments from the animal game to Cali, Colombia, home of the world’s biggest cocaine ring.

“We are sure we will be able to prove that the money was used to finance drug trafficking,” Biscaia told reporters.

The headlines that trumpeted the scandal shocked but did not surprise many Brazilians, who have seen plenty of thieving by public officials in recent times.

In 1992, President Fernando Collor de Mello was caught with his hand in the public till and came tumbling down in an impeachment trial. The next year, senior members of the Congress were found to have helped themselves to about $100 million of the federal budget.

The latest scandal threatened even wider damage. The prosecutor had dared to shake the rug where this city’s underworld had long treaded, exposing a parquetry of crime that extended from Rio’s ragged shantytowns to the stately chambers of the federal courts and the National Congress.

Biscaia turned up a log book registering regular payoffs from the bicheiros , or lottery dons, to more than 100 people, including figures as high up as Collor and as unlikely as Herbert de Souza, a sociologist widely hailed for his courageous fight against hunger, unemployment and AIDS.

Souza admitted that taking the money--for an AIDS prevention campaign--was a “political error.”

Payoffs also went to Rio’s mayor, Cesar Maia, said to have received $100,000 during his 1992 campaign for office, and to Rio state Gov. Nilo Batista, who confirmed that he negotiated a $58,000 donation from the lottery to Souza’s AIDS group when he was lieutenant governor.

Congressmen, judges and prosecutors were also on the lists, along with former federal police Supt. Edson de Oliveira--the man who arrested Paulo Cesar Farias, Collor’s former campaign treasurer and alleged partner in crime.

Biscaia allowed that some politicians, such as Maia, may not have known of campaign donations taken in their names by aides. But he was unsparing with the civil police, the investigating arm of the state police.

The civil police corps is “permeated by corruption,” he told reporters in Rio.

The Rio state secretary of police, Jorge Mario Gomes, also named in the payoffs, resigned last week.

The animal lottery, dating to the late 1800s, was a favorite pastime for millions of Brazilians. The bicheiros were tolerated and even revered for their charitable works.

Increasingly, however, authorities suspected the bicheiros of involvement in more nefarious activities.

Last year, state Judge Denise Frossard sentenced 14 of them to jail for conspiracy to commit a crime and maintaining armed bands. But until the recent raid, there was no solid proof of more serious crimes.

Police got their tip after a longtime bookie for Castor de Andrade, a leading bicheiro , decided to become an informant. When the bicheiro ‘s son-in-law was arrested for bribing a police officer with a suitcase of money months before, Andrade had fingered his bookie as the bagman.