A Brazilian senator charged in an explosive corruption scandal said that President Dilma Rousseff knew everything about the embezzlement scheme. (File Photo)
A Brazilian senator charged in an explosive corruption scandal said Saturday that President Dilma Rousseff knew everything about the embezzlement scheme at state oil company Petrobras and directly benefited from it.
"Dilma inherited and benefited directly from this system, which financed her election campaigns" in 2010 and 2014, said Delcidio Amaral, the former Senate leader of the ruling Workers' Party, in an interview with weekly magazine Veja.
Amaral said the leftist president's predecessor and mentor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva -- who faces corruption charges in the scandal -- "directed the scheme" of bribes paid out to politicians and parties.
"Dilma also knew everything. The difference is she pretended like she didn't have anything to do with it," he told Veja.
"Lula directly negotiated the appointment of Petrobras's directors with the different parties in Congress and knew exactly what the parties did with the directorships, mainly in terms of financing their campaigns."
Investigators say Petrobras executives colluded with construction companies to overbill the company by billions of dollars over the course of a decade, paying bribes to politicians and parties to keep the system going.
Rousseff and Lula "systematically obstructed justice" to protect themselves from anti-corruption investigators, Amaral said.
It is the latest damaging allegation from the senator, who on Tuesday accused Rousseff of trying to buy his silence when he was detained in the Petrobras case.
He made the accusation as part of a plea bargain in return for a lighter sentence.
The latest twist in the Petrobras saga closes out a rough week for Rousseff.
The president is fighting impeachment proceedings, mass protests and a firestorm over her move to name Lula as her chief of staff -- a move blocked by a Supreme Court judge over allegations she is trying to shield him from arrest by giving him ministerial immunity.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)