Brazilian Politician Indicted in New York in Kickback Scheme

The New York prosecutors accused Mr. Maluf, the former mayor of São Paulo and currently the leader of a rightist party in Brazil’s Congress, of taking part in a scheme to submit inflated and false invoices to contractors involved in building Avenida Agua Espraiada, a giant highway in São Paulo.

Robert M. Morgenthau, the Manhattan district attorney, said that after the inflated invoices were paid by the municipal agency supervising the highway project, the contractors generated kickbacks to Mr. Maluf, his son, Flávio Maluf, and others.

Some of the money was moved to a New York bank account and then to other locations, including Jersey, one of British Channel Islands, Mr. Morgenthau said.

The indictment accuses Mr. Maluf and four co-conspirators of stealing more than $11.6 million, the amount that prosecutors said could be directly traced to the kickback scheme. But Mr. Morgenthau said that Mr. Maluf was believed to have stolen more, and that bank records showed that from November 1997 to May 1999, $140 million passed through an account secretly controlled by Mr. Maluf at Safra National Bank in New York.

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