"No one is indispensable," declared Brazil's finance minister, Antonio Palocci, in the course of a two-hour press conference called to rebut allegations of corruption against him. A scandal over illegal payments to legislators and irregular party financing has already toppled leaders of government, Congress and the ruling Workers' Party (PT), to which Mr Palocci belongs. On August 19th it reached Mr Palocci himself. A former aide who became a manager of a rubbish-collection firm accused him of taking a monthly payoff from the company (and passing it on to the PT) when he was mayor of Riberao Preto, a city in Sao Paulo state. For the first time since the corruption scandal began in May, speculators panicked, dumping Brazilian bonds, shares and the real.
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