Brazil Official Quits After Saying He Slanted Data : Politics: Finance minister tells interviewer, in what he thought was private chat, that he sought to aid candidate.

Just one month before Brazilians go to the polls, the nation’s presidential campaign was jolted when the country’s finance minister resigned Saturday after admitting during what he thought was a private conversation that he manipulated economic data to help the government-backed candidate.

“I have no scruples,” Finance Minister Rubens Ricupero told a television reporter Thursday in what he thought was a private chat prior to a televised interview. “What is good, we take advantage of. What is bad, we hide.”

The comments, however, were inadvertently broadcast nationwide through satellite dishes before Ricupero and the reporter realized they were on the air.

Ricupero’s statements to the TV Globo reporter were particularly stunning, because opposition candidates had been claiming for weeks that the government was diverting funds and using other measures to help support presidential candidate Fernando Henrique Cardoso, a former senator and Ricupero’s predecessor as finance minister.

Only hours before Ricupero’s slip, presidential candidate Luis Inacio Lula da Silva of the leftist Workers’ Party had claimed in a Sao Paulo press conference that he had fallen behind Cardoso in the polls largely because of government and media efforts to aid Cardoso.

“When we were making these claims, they said we were radicals,” Lula said Saturday. “His statements point out the gravity of the involvement of the government and the TV Globo in the benefit of the candidacy of Fernando Henrique Cardoso.”

President Itamar Franco on Saturday accepted Ricupero’s resignation and tried to distance himself from the finance minister’s statements, saying that he was “shocked and perplexed” by the comments.

“I never heard him make such statements,” Franco told reporters.

Ricupero’s resignation could threaten Brazil’s 2-month-old economic plan to strengthen its currency and halt spiraling inflation. Ricupero, former ambassador to the United States and the fifth finance minister in less than two years, has been in charge of guiding the program, which was designed by Cardoso.

On July 1, the nation introduced a new currency, the real, and an economic program to drive down inflation, which had run at more than 2,000% last year. The government reported that inflation for August was 5.48%.

The early success of the plan has been a huge boost for Cardoso, who skyrocketed from being 20 points behind in mid-June to being more than 20 points ahead by the end of this month, according to recent polls.

Ricupero said his efforts to promote the economic plan have been a tremendous help to Cardoso’s campaign.

“Countless people phone me or look me up to say that they will vote for (Cardoso) because of me,” Ricupero told the TV Globo reporter in the private chat. “He knows that I am his big vote-getter.” Ricupero added that he was a perfect tool to mask government and media efforts to support Cardoso “because (TV Globo), instead of having to support Cardoso openly, they put me on the air and nobody can say anything.”

He said Lula’s campaign was trying to counter his efforts, “but it can’t, because I’m on the air all the time, and nobody can say anything. Isn’t that right? This is the solution, indirect, right.”

Brazilian Atty. Gen. Aristide Junqueira has launched an investigation into reports that ministers like Ricupero, and even the president, have been using their offices to help promote Cardoso’s candidacy.

In recent weeks, Franco and his aides have undertaken multibillion-dollar measures that could aid the candidate, including $770 million in wage increases for more than a million public workers and a promised $6.1 billion in farm credits.

The government also has sped transferring money to states and cities. It has disbursed $1.65 billion in the first five months of this year, compared with $770 million for the same period in 1993.

The attorney general is looking particularly into reports that Mines and Energy Minister Alexis Stepanenko pressed aides and other ministers to inaugurate the Xingu hydroelectric dam and carry out a $16.5 million electrification project in Mato Grosso state.

Urging Planning Minister Beni Veras to free funds for the project, Stepanenko wrote: “This deals with the commitment of the president, of (Cardoso) and me,” according to a copy of the Aug. 1 memo published in Veja news magazine.

Cardoso, who has consistently denied any governmental connection to his campaign, said he was “surprised” by Ricupero’s comments but doesn’t believe they will harm his campaign.

“My campaign has nothing to do with all this. I didn’t ask for any of his declarations. That’s part of the government and not in the campaign with me. If he supports me as many do in Itamar’s government, it is as a citizen.”