Temer charged with corruption
BRAZIL’S top prosecutor charged President Michel Temer with bribery on Monday, but the embattled conservative leader vowed to fight on.
The bribery charge filed by prosecutor-general Rodrigo Janot swept Temer into the forefront of a giant graft scandal that has engulfed Latin America’s biggest country over the last three years.
Although several past Brazilian presidents and scores of other politicians are currently being probed for corruption, Temer is the first leader in the country’s history to face criminal charges while still in office.
Temer acted “in violation of his duties to the state and to society”, Janot wrote, citing “abundant” proof that the president received bribe money.
For Temer to go on trial, the lower house of Congress must first approve Janot’s charge by a twothirds majority. Temer would then be suspended for six months for the trial.
Janot is also probing Temer for alleged obstruction of justice and membership of a criminal group. He is expected to file those charges at a later date, guaranteeing a sustained legal assault.
However, Temer’s aides say they are confident he has sufficient support in Congress to get the charges thrown out. In his first comments since returning from a trip to Russia and Norway, he said earlier Monday that he had no intention of stepping down.
“There is no plan B,” he said. “Nothing will destroy us – not me and not our ministers.”
Temer’s latest approval ratings are just 7%, lower than his unpopular leftist predecessor Dilma Rousseff, whom he replaced last year after she was impeached by his centre-right congressional allies for breaking budgetary rules.
He took over promising to restore political stability and to steer Brazil out of its deepest recession in history with market reforms. Yet the political capital he needs for those reforms, including the hugely unpopular proposal to cut back generous pensions and to free up labour laws, is rapidly slipping away.
The bribery charge is linked to the arrest of a close former presidential aide with a suitcase stuffed with cash that prosecutors say was part of payments from JBS meat-packing executives to Temer. In a filing with the Supreme Court, Janot accused Temer of receiving a 500 000-real (about R1.9-million)) bribe.
Equally explosive is the allegation that Temer approved of a plan with Joesley Batista, owner of JBS parent company J&F, to pay hush money to a politician jailed for corruption.
Batista secretly recorded Temer in an allegedly compromising discussion and gave the recording to prosecutors in a plea bargain to secure leniency in his own corruption case. — AFP