Pressure grows on Brazilian president to resign

Brazilian President Michel Temer

Pressure on Brazil’s president Michel Temer to step down
shows no sign of easing off following reports that one of his
special advisers has been arrested over corruption allegations.

Tadeu Filippelli, one of Temer’s closest aides, and two other
senior politicians are accused of deliberately inflating the cost
of the 2014 World Cup football stadium in Brasilia in return for
bribes from the construction company.

The venue, which was used in the quarter-final and third-placed
play-off of the 2014 World Cup, “was initially budgeted at $180m,
but ended up costing $454m,” reports The Guardian.

It’s the second most expensive football stadium ever built after
London’s Wembley.

Following Filippelli’s arrest, Temer’s office announced his
dismissal. But Temer’s woes were compounded when another top aide,
Rodrigo Rocha Loures, surrendered a bag filled with part of the
$150,000 (£116,000) in alleged hush money meant for former House
Speaker Eduardo Cunha, according to the country’s federal
police.

The alleged money was the subject of a secret tape recording of
the President released last week in which it appeared he told an
accomplice that he “had to keep paying Cunha” in order to keep him
quiet.

Brazil’s highest court has opened investigations into Temer for
alleged obstruction of justice and involvement in passive
corruption.

Brazil’s bar association also weighed in with “the council
voting 25 to 1 in favour of an impeachment hearing,” reports the
Financial Times.

“We are requesting the impeachment of another president of the
republic, the second time . . . in one year and four months,” said
Claudio Lamachia, the bar association’s president, referring to the
impeachment last year of Dilma Rousseff, Temer’s predecessor.

Temer has denied the accusations and refused to step down. “I
won’t resign. Oust me if you want,” he said in an interview for
Brazil’s Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper.

The allegations come a week after what Bloomberg described as an “epic showdown”
between former President (and Temer’s potential successor) Luiz
Lula and the country’s famed corruption judge Sergio Moro.

Lula was closely questioned for five hours by Moro over his
alleged masterminding of “Operation Car Wash”, the name given to
the complex web of bribery and graft that has engulfed a number of
top politicians and major companies in Brazil over the past few
years.