By Andrei Khalip
Rio de Janeiro - Brazil's president acknowledged irregular campaign funding by his Workers' Party but blamed the party's fallen leaders in what some saw as an attempt to divert attention from a bribery scandal rocking his government.
In a television interview recorded on Friday in France and aired on Monday by the Globonews channel, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said the PT, as his party is known, was involved in irregular fund-raising and said the practice was common in Brazil.
"What the PT has done, from the electoral point of view, is what is being done in Brazil systematically," he said, adding his party had been wrong to mar its longstanding reputation for honesty.
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Some opposition politicians say the PT was admitting to a smaller crime for which it was unlikely to be punished to divert attention from accusations it used public funds to bribe allied lawmakers to pass government legislation through Congress.
The scandal, the worst of Lula's administration, could hurt the president's re-election chances next year.
Lula's remarks came a few days after former PT Treasurer Delubio Soares said in a television interview he had received the equivalent of about $16-million in loans from an advertising executive, which was used to pay the PT's campaign bills for 2002 and 2004. The money from executive Marcos Valerio, who organized political advertising for PT candidates, was never recorded on the party's accounting books.
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