Joe Leahy – Financial Times, 10/11/2012
It is not often that the endless corruption scandals and political squabbles in Brasília make their way into the brokerage reports of Wall Street and Faria Lima, São Paulo’s financial district.
But in the past few weeks, the word “Mensalão” has begun appearing with more frequency in analysts’ notes.
The term, which means “big monthly allowance”, is the name of Brazil’s biggest corruption scandal, in which former ruling Workers’ Party (PT) lieutenants of ex-president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva paid a stipend to opposition politicians using money stolen from government enterprises and elsewhere in return for their support in Congress.
