Brazil's former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said on Thursday he was ready to cooperate with prosecutors because he had committed no crime and called charges against him "pure fiction" aimed at stopping him running again.

 

Lula cried and laughed at the first press conference since he was charged on Wednesday with corruption and money laundering for allegedly receiving bribes disguised as favors from an engineering company implicated in the massive Petrobras graft scandal.