It is always a joy to hear about Lulinha, Lula’s eldest son. It appeared to the world twenty years ago, when I was editor-in-chief of Look. It was another world, but Lulinha remains the same.
The name of the eldest son of the President of the Republic appeared in the context of investigations into fraud perpetrated by the INSS against retirees and pensioners. A witness to the investigation told the PF that Lulinha allegedly received from Careca from the INSS the equivalent of 25 million BRL, in addition to an allowance of 300,000 BRL. The boy denies everything and warns that he will sue anyone who accuses him.
The witness also told the PF that Careca and Lulinha were traveling together at the fraudster’s expense. It is proven that both were in 1st class in a Latam plane that took them from São Paulo to Lisbon, on November 8 of last year, as published by his colleague André Shalders, from the column of Andreza Matais.
I said that Lulinha remains the same, because there are still those who insist on associating it with receiving tremendous amounts of money, which are not exactly the result of hard work.
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He came into the world after Look revealed, in 2005, that Lulinha, a former zoo keeper until two years earlier, was a partner in an electronic game content production company, Gamecorp, which had taken a lot of money from Telemar/Oi, a public telephone concessionaire.
Between investments, service and advertising contracts, Telemar/Oi transferred, between 2004 and 2016, 132 million BRL to what became the Gamecorp/Gol group. Would this sum of money have been transferred to a company of the same size whose partner was not Lula’s son?
From the beginning, there was suspicion that it was all just pay for regulatory benefits, such as approving Oi’s merger with Brasil Telecom, which would take place in 2008. In other words, pay for influence peddling. But nothing has been proven.
In 2019, Lulinha would also be the subject of a Lava Jato investigation, as an alleged financier of the renovations of the famous Atibaia site. The case ended up being archived.
History is history, as Millôr Fernandes said, and before publishing the first report on the incredible success of the president’s son, Lula called Veja, asking us not to put her on the cover of the magazine, because his wife, Marisa, would die of grief. We have provided you with this service.
Lulinha, however, continued to be in the crosshairs of Veja journalists. Shortly after, the Brasilia branch discovered that the president’s son had a partnership with a Brasilia lobbyist.
Informed of our investigation, the Palácio do Planalto did everything to prevent the publication of the second report on Lulinha, which remained shelved for months.
Until Lula gave an interview to Leaf. Asked by the newspaper’s journalists about his eldest son’s brilliant business career, the president said it was not his fault that Lulinha was a “Ronaldinho of business.”
This statement, which seemed cynical, was the straw that broke the camel’s back for us, editors of the magazine, to finally publish, at the end of 2006, in the middle of the presidential campaign, the report on Lulinha’s partnership with the lobbyist. This time, on the cover. Roberto Civita, owner of Veja, even suffered from heart fibrillation, already anticipating the enormous problem this would pose.
Indeed, among other tidbits sent our way, Veja was accused of publishing the report to try to prevent Lula’s re-election. The truth is that we didn’t do it before because Lula himself pressured us to keep it.
Now we have Lulinha in the news again. But the joy that he usually brings us will be even more fleeting, because journalism has changed for the worse and the boy moved to Madrid, in the middle of this year, under the pretext of providing advice to Spanish companies. History is history and, even today, some believe that the joke that Rui Barbosa taught English in London is true.
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