Brazil's Lula charged as head of Petrobras corruption scheme

• Brazilian prosecutors today charged ex-President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva - probably still the country's most popular politician - with being the "top boss" of a vast corruption scheme at state oil company Petrobras (NYSE:PBR).
• The prosecutor says political kickbacks had caused 42B reais ($12.6B) in losses, and personally had received 3.7M reais ($1.11M) in bribes; Lula's lawyers say the accusations are part of an effort to stop him running in the 2018 election.
• The two-year-old Operation Carwash investigation has uncovered how political appointees named by Lula's Workers Party and its allies handed overpriced contracts to engineering firms in exchange for illicit party funding and bribes; the probe helped propel last month's impeachment of Lula's chosen successor, Dilma Rousseff, on unrelated charges of breaking budget rules.
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