Simon Romero Quotes

Lula was really the face of Brazil's boom in the previous decade and is one of the most towering politicians in the country today, so for this investigation to find get to him is an enormous deal.

Well, Lula has an incredible amount of sway still. He's someone who came up from very humble origins, so his life trajectory is something that many people in Brazil still identify with. So within the governing Workers' Party, he has a lot of power. He has power to name ministers, some people say. And he's very close with the current president as well. She's his handpicked successor.

Not in the sense of investigators saying that she [Lula] was personally enriched as a result of the scandal, but there are new reports emerging this week claiming that she may have had a hand in trying to derail the investigations. She was chairwoman of the board for years, so she has come under a good deal of criticism over not having identified the wrongdoing at that time.

We saw groups of people gathering in front of Lula's house in Sao Paulo this morning. You had people shouting at one another, and some fistfights even broke out. Some of his supporters are claiming that this is equivalent of a coup attempt, an attempt to remove Rousseff from power and prevent Lula from running again. And other people are saying that this is simply a display of rule of law in Brazil, that no one in Brazil can be above the law at this time.

You know, there's a growing level of disenchantment with governing institutions in Brazil. And in a sense, it's a healthy development because you have investigators and prosecutors going to work and finding out these things and revealing them to the public. But as a result, you have a lot of growing distrust in the way that government functions in Brazil.