Cunha, Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, has been accused by former Petrobras consultant Julio Camargo of having received around five million U.S. dollars in bribes between June 2006 and October 2012 for interfering in a Petrobras drillship contract.
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Collor told Brazilian media on Thursday that he was not guilty of any wrongdoing. Collor, who served as president from 1990-92, resigned from the presidency and was subsequently impeached for corruption.
Mr Cunha denies the allegations and says they are politically motivated. He’s charged with corruption and with money laundering. A vast corruption scandal has ensnared political and corporate bosses, and a federal audit is considering rejecting the government’s 2014 book-keeping. “I am going to carrying on doing the job I was elected to to by the majority of the House”, he said. Police raided Collor’s house in July and confiscated a Ferrari, a Porsche and Lamborghini luxury vehicle.
Cunha is a member of the huge Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, or PMDB – the main ally of President Dilma Rousseff’s Workers’ Party in the ruling coalition – and has accused prosecutors of pressuring Camargo into changing his statements, given that Cunha’s name was not mentioned in initial testimony.
Turning to Brazil, where Rousseff is trying to reduce a gaping fiscal deficit and restore confidence in her government’s accounts, she said her country was facing “massive economic difficulties”.
The recent corruption scandal and the upcoming Olympic Games has done nothing more than fan the flames of nearly universal outrage among all Brazil’s political factions, placing the PT party in jeopardy and getting even the once-loved former president, Lula Da Silva, into legal trouble. This is my intention, and I believe the intention of many people here.
The August 2015 protest is the fourth mass protest that has taken place pushing for the Rousseff’s impeachment.
“We are interested in cooperating in renewable energies and also in providing all support in the area of infrastructure and transmission lines”, Merkel said at a press conference following a meeting with Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff.
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While Rousseff faces opposition from the right, she also faces disillusion from the left over government austerity measures aimed at fixing the economy.
