A Brazilian Supreme Court justice on Thursday suspended Eduardo Cunha, the senior lawmaker at the center of efforts to impeach President Dilma Rousseff, citing his attempt to obstruct a probe into his alleged corruption. The speaker of Brazil’s lower house of Congress is the architect of the impeachment drive which is expected to see Rousseff forced to step aside from office on Wednesday. / AFP PHOTO / ANDRESSA ANHOLETE
BRASILIA, Brazil (AFP) — by Damian Wroclavsky
A Brazilian Supreme Court justice on Thursday suspended Eduardo Cunha, the senior lawmaker at the center of efforts to impeach President Dilma Rousseff, citing his attempt to obstruct a probe into his alleged corruption.
The speaker of Brazil’s lower house of Congress is the architect of the impeachment drive which is expected to see Rousseff forced to step aside from office on Wednesday.
Cunha’s dramatic setback was not expected to change the momentum against Rousseff, but yet again signaled Brazilian politics’ descent into a whirlpool of corruption scandals and instability.
Despite facing criminal charges including bribery and hiding money in Swiss bank accounts, Cunha has survived months of attempts by prosecutors and a congressional ethics committee to see him brought to justice.
A master backroom political operator, he is widely seen as the key figure in getting the impeachment proceedings green-lighted by the lower house in April and sent to the Senate, which will vote on opening a trial and suspending Rousseff Wednesday.
But the man Brazilians refer to as a real-life Frank Underwood — the corrupt US politician in the hit Netflix series “House of Cards” — appeared finally to have been brought down by Justice Teori Zavaski.
The justice said that Cunha had obstructed justice “to prevent the success of investigations against him.”
The ruling was a surprise, coming hours before the full Supreme Court was due to consider a separate attempt to have Cunha removed.
Unfit for office
The timing of the ruling reflected concerns on the Supreme Court that with Rousseff likely being suspended and replaced by her vice president, Michel Temer, next week, Cunha would have moved up to first on the presidential succession list. As speaker, he is currently second after Temer.
Zavaski said in his ruling “there is not the least doubt that the suspect does not meet the minimum personal requirements for fully exercising the functions of speaker of the chamber of deputies at this time.”
“That qualifies him even less so for substituting as the president of the republic,” the justice said.
Prosecutors had long asked for Cunha to be brought to trial in the Supreme Court — which handles all high-ranking politicians — but the court was said to have been wary of suspending Cunha earlier, while the impeachment battle was in full flow in the lower house.
Cunha’s removal is considered unlikely to help Rousseff much, since she has already been badly weakened and her case is now in the hands of the Senate.
Rousseff is accused of manipulating government budget accounts with illegal loans, a charge which she describes as technical and not worthy of impeachment.
If she is suspended on Wednesday she will lose executive powers and be put on half pay pending the outcome of the trial, which could take several months.
Circles of corruption
Cunha is accused of taking bribes as part of the massive corruption scheme centered on Petrobras, the huge state oil company. Dozens of politicians and top executives have been charged or in some cases already found guilty and jailed.
Cunha, who rejects the charges, is also being investigated by the congressional ethics committee over allegedly lying to Congress about possessing secret Swiss bank accounts.
Highlighting the seemingly endless circles of corruption scandals engulfing Brazil, the congressional deputy who is next in line to replace Cunha as speaker of the house, Waldir Maranhao Cardoso, is himself being investigated for Petrobras-related crimes, including money laundering.
Meanwhile, Temer, who has been named by cooperating witnesses as involved in the Petrobras scheme but is not being formally investigated, faced a new legal problem of his own Thursday.
After being found guilty earlier this week by an electoral court of breaking campaign finance rules, he risks being barred from seeking elected office for eight years, a spokesman for the court told AFP.
The ban however does not affect his current position — or his likely taking over of the presidency next week.
A conservative member of Brazilian politics’ growing Evangelical wing, Cunha belongs to the center-right PMDB party, which used to be the key partner in a shaky ruling coalition led by Rousseff’s Workers’ Party.
The PMDB fatally wounded her when it broke away and decided to back impeachment. Temer is also from the PMDB and Rousseff has accused him and Cunha of being conspirators using the impeachment process to bring her down in a “coup.”