Brazil minister trip exposes links to NGOs

Brazilian Labor Minister Carlos Lupi had several trips paid for by a non-government organization that is under investigation for fraud, according to a magazine that has reported on an alleged bribery scam at the ministry.

The Veja magazine article on Saturday said Lupi, two aides and former Maranhao State Governor Jackson Lago in 2009 used a jet arranged by the owner of a non-government organization that has been a contractor at the ministry for three years.

One of the aides, who have both since left those jobs, Ezequiel Nascimento, said the three-day tour around several cities in Maranhao state was arranged by the contractor, Adair Meira, Veja reported. Another aide, lawmaker Weverton Rocha, said the jet was rented by Lago, who died recently.

Calls to Lupi's spokesman seeking comment were not immediately answered. Efforts to reach Nascimento, Meira and the organization, Renapsi, were unsuccessful.

The report comes days after Lupi denied another Veja report accussing two former aides at the ministry of running a bribery scheme. The magazine alleged that non-governmental organizations, or NGOs, were forced to pay bribes to officials to retain their contracts with the ministry. 

The Labor Ministry began its own investigation into the allegations after the first Vega report.

Lupi, a former news stand owner, is the latest minister to come under the media spotlight over alleged wrongdoing, worsening a political headache for President Dilma Rousseff that has distracted the government's attention from pushing economic reform bills through Congress.

He said last week he had Rousseff's confidence and that it would take "a bullet" to get him out of his post.

Relations between NGOs -- nonprofit groups that perform activities such as worker training -- have been at the center of at least two of the corruption scandals that have unseated five ministers this year. A sixth minister quit after making disparaging remarks about his colleagues.

Several of the scandals have followed a similar pattern -- initial denials by ministers followed by fresh allegations in the media and the eventual withdrawal of support by Rousseff.

Meira, who runs the Renapsi NGO, denied sharing the jet with Lupi in exchange for the contracts, according to Veja. Since 2008, the organization has earned 10.4 million reais ($6 million) from worker training and other contracts, the magazine reported.