Subject Of Scandal Found Shot To Death

A man who to many Brazilians symbolized the corruption that led to the downfall of a president was found dead at his beach house Sunday. Police said Paulo Cesar Farias was shot through the heart.

The body of his girlfriend, Susana Marcolini, was found at his other home, about 1,300 miles away in the town of Maceio. TV Globo reported that she killed him, then traveled to the second home and shot herself.

Police did not give a motive, but most Brazilian news media described the shootings as a lovers’ quarrel between Farias, 51, and Marcolini, 28.

Farias, the high-living treasurer of former President Fernando Collor de Mello’s presidential campaign, allegedly took suitcases of cash out of the country on jets belonging to his air taxi company.

He was arrested in 1993 in Thailand after an international search, and convicted of corruption in 1994 in connection with the scandal that led to Collor’s impeachment.