Mário Coelho de Almeida Filho

Sustained media coverage of corruption during 2001 helped increase pressure on powerful Congress members and other government officials, several of whom were forced to resign amid accusations of misconduct and embezzlement.

In February, the weekly ISTO reported that taped conversations between federal prosecutors and Senator Antônio Carlos Magalhães, who was president of the Congress at the time, revealed that Magalhães knew how senators had voted in a June 2000 secret ballot to impeach Senator Luiz Estevão. Later, it emerged that Magalhães and Senator José Roberto Arruda, leader of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso's ruling coalition in the Senate, had acquired the secret voting records from an employee in the Senate's voting registry. In May, the two senators resigned before the Senate Ethics Committee could expel them for violating Congress' secret balloting system.

New York, August 27, 2001—In a letter sent today to Rio de Janeiro State attorney general Francesco Conte, CPJ expressed deep concern about the August 16 murder of journalist Mário Coelho de Almeida Filho and requested more information about the case.

Coelho was killed one day before he was to testify in a criminal defamation lawsuit.

In what appears to be a premeditated murder, the 42-year-old Coelho was killed by a gunman outside his house in the municipality of Magé, about 50 km (30 miles) from Rio de Janeiro, according to local press reports.