Brazilian prosecutors on Thursday lodged corruption charges against the speaker of the lower house – a key figure in the country’s current political crisis – and also against a former president.
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Prosecutor General Rodrigo Janot alleged that Cunha received payoffs relating to contracts to build two survey vessels for Petrobras.
The corruption charges relate not just to senior executives at the company, but also to private contractors and senior politicians in Brazil.
Radical voices For traditional anti-corruption campaigners out on Sunday, such radical voices only served to dilute the original thrust of the protests, which were sparked by revelations of political graft in state-controlled oil giant Petrobras.
The country’s top prosecutor filed the charges against Mr Cunha at the Supreme Court, where he will face trial if he is indicted.
The vote is crucial to end legislative gridlock, said Senate President Renan Calheiros, who has brokered a political deal with Rousseff to ease tensions with Congress and quiet calls for her impeachment.
As Gulherme Boulos, representative for Brazil’s Homeless Workers Movement (MTST), said his group is not blindly supportive of President Rousseff, but does not view replacing her with right-wing alternatives as a viable solution.
Thousands of Brazilians turned out for rallies across the country Thursday to voice support for the president, but their numbers were smaller than demonstrations on Sunday that drew protesters calling for Rousseff to lose her job.
Ms Rousseff’s government declined to comment on the latest charges in the so-called “Car Wash” probe, named for a Brasilia gas station where some of the funds were allegedly laundered.
Their support for Rousseff was at best lukewarm, saying they’d fight attempts to remove her from power, but believed she had abandoned her socialist roots to embrace liberal austerity.
On Wednesday, Cunha denied that he would be resign from his position due to the investigation, although a movement to oust him has been gaining traction in the Chamber. “I think there will be two to three weeks of a very tense environment”.
Mr Cunha said earlier this week that he would remain in his post as Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies even if he was indicted.
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“The consequences of this may be dire and produce a worse situation for Dilma… he will vent his anger toward Dilma and spare no effort to get her impeached”, Fleischer said.
