Profile : Brazil’s Political Pasha in a Pickle : ‘I give orders to Collor,’ Paulo Cesar Farias once bragged. Now, the businessman and the president are enmeshed in an influence-peddling scandal heading toward impeachment.

RIO DE JANEIRO —  Paulo Cesar Farias, provincial wheeler-dealer, invested in Fernando Collor de Mello’s long-shot bid for the Brazilian presidency in 1989. And when Collor took office the next year, Farias began cashing in.

“PC,” as the bald and chubby businessman is known, held no government post. But his power soon became legendary. “I give orders to Collor,” a newspaper once quoted him as saying. “The friend of the king,” he was sometimes called.

In PC’s salad days, the widespread belief that he was a man with political clout was evidently like money in the bank for him. He reportedly raked in millions of dollars by peddling influence with the same ambitious energy he had employed to peddle used cars in his youth.

But now, the dark legend of PC has not only caught up with him--it has solidified into a momentous political crisis, bringing hundreds of thousands of protesters to the streets and pushing Collor to the brink of impeachment.

A special committee of Congress that investigated PC’s dealings said in its final report last week that Farias, 46, organized an elaborate racket for selling nonexistent “services” to companies hoping to do business with the government, and for skimming money from contracts. The report also accused him of having at least $6.5 million deposited in accounts used to pay personal expenses for the president and his relatives. Evidence and testimony “lead to the conviction that the illicit acts practiced by Mr. P.C. Farias were well known to the president of the republic,” the committee said.

Its report will serve as the basis for an impeachment process scheduled to begin in the Congress this week.

The committee’s findings gave official weight to the PC legend, previously known through political gossip, newspaper reports and the experience of many businessmen. Congressman Luis Roberto Ponte, who has close connections with Brazilian contractors, said Farias was infamous among them as an influence-peddler.

The Farias organization, known as the “PC scheme,” used loopholes in the laws and contacts in government to fix bidding procedures and government loans in favor of “clients,” according to Ponte. “Then it would charge a ‘commission,’ ” he said.

Farias was known to have a network of friends and associates in ministries and agencies. His own brother was the No. 2 official in the Health Ministry during the first year of Collor’s presidency. But Farias has insisted, “I didn’t name anyone in that government.”

The fact that the “PC scheme” was widely reported, yet nothing was done about it for two years, partly reflects a traditional tolerance in Brazil for taking advantage of friends in power, according to anthropologist Roberto da Matta. In the United States, Da Matta said, “PC would already be in jail.”

Now that the congressional committee has shown how far Farias exceeded the bounds of tradition, he is expected to be indicted and tried for corruption. So far, however, he remains free, sitting out the crisis in his mansion in the impoverished northeastern state of Alagoas.

“My conscience is absolutely tranquil that I did nothing aberrant,” he told a Brazilian newspaper last week.

Farias, born in the Alagoas town of Murici, is one of eight children whose father is a retired tax inspector with a reputation for honesty. Paulo Cesar studied for the Roman Catholic priesthood at the Metropolitan Seminary in Maceio, the state capital, but dropped out while still in his teens and became an announcer at a church radio station.

His fondness for cars led him into the used car business and earned him the nickname “Paulinho Gasolina”--”Pauly Gasoline.” After serving as an assistant to the state governor in the late 1960s, Farias returned to his business career, becoming the owner of a series of enterprises in Alagoas, including a farm implements agency. He also earned a law degree.

The congressional committee that investigated Farias depicted him as a man whose business methods have been “marked by the obstinate quest for quick and easy profit, no matter what means had to be used.” The report said case files of federal tax authorities contain evidence of numerous infractions by Farias through the years, “all unexplainably shelved.”

Throughout his career, Farias has cultivated contacts with powerful people. Among the most powerful in Alagoas was the late Sen. Arnon de Mello, who owned the main television and radio stations. Farias first made friends with the senator’s youngest son, Pedro, then with another son, Fernando, the future president.

When Fernando Collor de Mello ran for governor of Alagoas in 1986, Farias was his campaign fund-raiser. Collor won the governorship and gave two of PC’s brothers jobs--as transport secretary and president of a state medical laboratory.

Farias, known as a super-salesman, stuck to business. The budding tycoon built the largest home in Maceio, a mansion with an elevator, a pool and a tennis court.

When Collor began his campaign for the presidency, supported only by a small party, few analysts gave him a chance. But Farias backed him again and, as coordinator of campaign finances, persuaded other businessmen to kick in.

Collor’s fiery speeches against corruption and “maharajahs,” or overpaid bureaucrats, fueled his rise in opinion polls. By mid-1989, it wasn’t so hard for Farias to find contributors.

By all accounts, the richest phase of PC’s career began on March 15, 1990--Collor’s inauguration day. A Farias company called EPC began billing millions of dollars for “consultant” fees. Its contracts and services were often verbal, with no documentation other than questionable invoices, the congressional committee discovered.

In May, Collor’s brother Pedro told Veja magazine that Farias did business “by mutual agreement with Fernando (the president). Paulo Cesar tells everyone that 70% is for Fernando and 30% for him.”

“What he (Farias) has made was through influence trafficking after the beginning of the (Collor) government,” Pedro told the newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo. PC’s money, he told the newspaper Jornal do Brasil, “was stolen, extorted, raised fraudulently.”

The president’s brother said he was angry because Farias was starting a newspaper in Alagoas that would compete with the Collor family paper, which Pedro managed. His denunciations put a stop to PC’s newspaper project, but they also led to the congressional investigation.

Both the president and Farias say they have not spoken in two years and have no business dealings with each other. “We have nothing to talk about,” Farias has said. Whether they have talked or not, the congressional committee contended that Collor knew of Farias’ activities, profited from them and failedto stop them.

Collor’s enemies, as well as many of his former supporters, are now predicting that “the friend of the king” will cost him the throne.

Biography

Name: Paulo Cesar Farias

Titles: Businessman, lawyer.

Age: 46

Personal: Enjoys Scotch whiskey, French wines and Mozart symphonies. He and wife, Elma, have daughter, Ingrid, 12, and son, Paulo Augusto Cesar, 10.

Quote: “I feel wronged, treated like the villain of the nation. I accept any judicial decision, but I don’t accept the disloyalty or abandonment of those who were always helped by me.”

-- Interview in Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper