But information from Swiss authorities proved the existence of the accounts.
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The vote was seen as critical for the credibility of Congress and all eyes will now be on what Mr Cunha does next, the BBC’s Wyre Davies in Brazil says.
The once powerful former speaker Eduardo Cunha, who has been charged with corruption by the Supreme Court, was banned from politics for eight years and faces arrest after he lost his congressional prerogatives.
At that time, Rousseff said that Cunha was seeking revenge for the government’s refusal to protect him in the ethics investigation that has now led to his downfall. Prosecutors have leaked credit card statements showing that Mr. Cunha and his family spent $40,000 (U.S.) on a nine-day family holiday in Miami in 2013; his wife Claudia Cunha spent $59,000 on tennis lessons, and they had a fleet of luxury cars, some registered to the company Jesus.com – even as he reported an annual household income of $120,000.
Prosecutor General Rodrigo Janot, who brought the charges against Cunha several months ago, said that he had been trying to remove him from office since December.
Coming from the same PMDB party as the new president Michel Temer, Mr Cunha would make for a risky whistle-blower for the new regime, which has been rejected by many for its support of Ms Rousseff’s impeachment.
He is also known as the “keeper of secrets” in Congress, where dozens of other politicians are also accused of fraud and has suggested he may cooperate with investigators into a wide ranging corruption scandal.
He has been a key ally of new President Michel Temer, who had been Rousseff’s vice president. He added, however, that he was writing a book to “tell everything” that happened in Congress in the run up to Rousseff’s impeachment.
Although prosecutors allege Cunha received millions of dollars in bribes linked to the mammoth corruption case at state-run oil giant Petrobras, lawmakers considered only the issue of whether he had lied about having secret bank accounts in Switzerland.
No matter his fate, he said, no one can take from him “the pleasure of seeing that criminal government go”. Cunha asked his peers, appearing in the house to repeat his defense argument that his assets were held in trust funds over which he had no control.
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The Blog of Josias de Souza, meanwhile, declared that pushed by a vote of 450 legislators, Cunha fell from his horse without laying hands on his guns. The plea bargains of other former politicians have driven the case forward.
