A majority of the Brazilian Supreme Court voted to accept corruption charges against Brazilian Chamber of Deputies President Eduardo Cunha on Wednesday, putting him on trial for allegedly accepting bribes on contracts for two drill ships leased by state oil company Petrobras.
The ruling, which must be officially confirmed at the end of the court’s session, is a setback to the lower house speaker as he struggles to fend off a request from Brazil’s top prosecutor for his removal for obstructing investigation into the Petrobras graft scandal.
A bitter rival of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, Cunha could lose his seat if an ethics committee inquiry under way finds he lied about undeclared Swiss bank accounts.
Cunha, who comes from the PMDB party that is Rousseff’s main coalition ally, broke with her last year and in December last year took up an opposition request for the impeachment of the president.
However, the case against him at the Supreme Court, the only court that can try elected officials in Brazil, could hasten Cunha’s downfall and undermine efforts to impeach Rousseff.
Even the main opposition party to the Rousseff government, the PSDB, called on Cunha to step down after the court vote.
“Now we have a speaker who is under investigation by the House ethics committee and, what’s worse, indicted by the Supreme Court. It’s the limit. He has to go,” said Antonio Imbassahy, the PSDB leader in the lower chamber.
Cunha has said repeatedly that he will not resign, even though he faces charges of receiving a US$5 million bribe in the widening price-fixing and political kickback scheme that has landed executives of top engineering companies in jail and ensnared dozens of politicians from Rousseff’s coalition.
In August last year, a judge sentenced former Petrobras international director Nestor Cervero to more than 12 years in prison for corruption and money laundering related to the bribe allegedly paid to Cunha in exchange for contracts with South Korean shipbuilder Samsung Heavy Industries.
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