New Brazil minister downplays misconduct conviction

BRASÍLIA: Brazil's incoming environment minister, Ricardo Salles, has said he will take up his post on January 1 despite being found guilty of "improbity" while heading the environment portfolio in Sao Paulo´s state government.

He told Brazilian radio station Jovem Pan late Friday that the next president, Jair Bolsonaro, will keep him on as part of his team.

Bolsonaro easily won October elections and enjoys a 75-percent approval rating in large part because of his pledge to stamp out political corruption and has said several times he will remove anyone against whom such charges were proven.

But Salles said that while the judge in his case on Thursday fined him and stripped him of political rights for altering plans for an environmentally protected area in Sao Paulo state to favor business interests, it was more politics than wrongdoing.

"The president (elect) understands that this trial and the verdict was much more a political-ideological fight against the posture I adopted in the Secretariat than any sort of formal illegality," he said. "There was no crime. There was no personal advantage for me. There was no prejudice," he told the radio. Salles had been secretary for the environment in Sao Paulo state between 2016 and 2017.