Lula's former chief of staff leaves campaign after bills paid by businesswoman targeted by PF

Luchsinger is friends with Fábio Luiz, one of Lula's sons. He is known in the public debate as Lulinha, and is the target of three investigations at the STF (Supreme Federal Court) on suspicion of influence peddling - his defense denies irregularities.

There has still been no official announcement of Marcola's request to leave. Until Tuesday night (4), Lula's allies believed that he would continue on the team, unless he asked to leave.

Marcola claimed to have taken a loan of R$249,000 from Roberta Luchsinger. In a statement released to the press, he stated that there was never anything other than the personal loan he obtained from her and that this was a transaction "of a strictly private nature".

He also declared that his banking and tax secrets are fully available to the courts and that he appointed a lawyer and instructed him to make use of all documents in order to clarify the facts.

Lula's allies report that Marcola has been dejected since the case came to light. He would have told the president and campaign members about the operations with Roberta Luchsinger around the time he left the president's chief of staff two weeks ago.

Leaving the position, and entering the campaign, would have been motivated by the potential strain of transactions. The idea was for him to have a discreet role in the team that coordinated Lula's re-election efforts.

The operations between Marcola and Roberta Luchsinger began to become public on Monday (3), in a report on the website Poder360. Later, it was reported that she had paid Lula's former advisor's bills.

According to people with knowledge of the investigations, Roberta paid bills from Lula's assistant between four and six months of 2024. The information was revealed by the Metrópoles portal and confirmed by the report.

When contacted this Wednesday, Marcola's defense did not respond.

The president's allies told the reporter that Marcola told him about the bill payments. According to these reports, the president's former advisor said that the entire amount was through these operations, without a cash deposit in his name.

According to these PT allies, Marcola had recently been alerted by a lawyer that the situation was problematic and sought to return the money to the businesswoman.

Roberta Luchsinger is a businesswoman and partner at RL Consultoria e Intermediações. In May, she told the PF that she introduced Lulinha to lobbyist Antônio Carlos Camilo Antunes, known as the Careca of the INSS, before the launch of Operação Sem Desconto.

The operation investigates a scheme that would have deducted more than R$6 billion from INSS beneficiaries from 2019 to 2024. Careca from INSS is identified by the PF as one of the central operators of the fraud scheme in retirement discounts.

Last December, Roberta was the target of searches. When investigating the scheme, the PF claimed to have found payments from a company linked to Careca to a company owned by Roberta, totaling R$1.5 million.

Marcola had already been advising Lula for almost seven years when the current president won the 2022 election. When the PT member was in prison, between 2018 and 2019, he was the advisor who took messages from Lula to other politicians. Once in government, the president appointed his advisor as chief of staff, being primarily responsible for the presidential agenda.

In addition, he served as one of the contacts for politicians who sought to speak to the head of government. Lula doesn't have a cell phone. Anyone who needs to speak to him calls Marcola or another person from a small group who is always close to the PT member.