Former Brazilian lawmaker Rodrigo Rocha Loures, a close aide and friend of President Michel Temer, was arrested at his home yesterday in a corruption investigation that also targets the president, a federal police spokesman said.
In a police video released on May 19, Loures was seen running out of a Sao Paulo restaurant carrying a bag with 500,000 reais ($154,000) in cash that prosecutors say was a bribe from the owners of the world’s largest meatpacker, JBS SA.
Plea-bargain testimony by two executives of JBS’s holding company J&F Investimentos SA implicated Temer and other politicians in graft and led prosecutors to accuse Loures of being a middleman for Temer, which the president has denied.
Temer’s office had no immediate comment on the arrest of his former aide.
The Supreme Court authorised the investigation of Temer and Rocha Loures for corruption, criminal organisation and obstruction of justice, triggering the worst political crisis since Temer took over from impeached leftist Dilma Rousseff last year.
Since the leaking of a recording of a late-night conversation with a JBS executive in which Temer appeared to condone corrupt practices, the president has faced calls for his resignation or impeachment.
An electoral court investigation of possible illegal campaign funding in Temer’s 2014 election as vice-president could also oust him from office.
Loures, a businessman-turned-politician, could seek a plea bargain, sources in the prosecution team told Reuters this week. That could damage the president’s case that he did nothing illegal.
Loures’ lawyer, however, told Reuters yesterday that his client will not seek a plea deal.
“My orientation is against it, and his family supports that,” the lawyer, Cezar Bitencourt, said.
He called the arrest “unnecessary” and said it was part of a strategy by prosecutors to pressure Loures into opting for the plea bargain.
Last week, Loures turned over to police the cash-filled bag he was seen carrying in the leaked video.
He has been investigated for allegedly negotiating 15mn reais in bribes from JBS.
The judge who ordered Loures’ incarceration is leading the Supreme Court’s investigation into a sprawling pay-for-play corruption case at state oil giant Petrobras that already has swept up many in Brazil’s political and business elite.
It now threatens to bring down Temer, who is fighting calls for his impeachment as prosecutors build a case of corruption and obstruction of justice against him.
The president was drawn into the scandal last month with the release of an audio recording secretly made by an owner of the world’s largest meatpacking company, Joesley Batista, at a late night March 7 meeting with Temer at his residence.
In the recording, which Temer says has been tampered with, the president allegedly gives the okay for payments to buy the silence of a politician imprisoned in the Petrobras scandal, Eduardo Cunha, the former speaker of the lower house.
Batista turned over the audio recording to prosecutors, and said Temer had designated Loures to receive bribes in return for favours to the company.
Shortly after the Temer-Batista meeting, police filmed Loures with the bag full of money.
The scene has been played repeatedly on Brazilian television.
Temer has staunchly defended Loures and did so again in an interview published yesterday in the Veja news magazine.
Loures may have been “the victim of a trap”, Temer said, describing the former congressman as “a very intelligent person, very capable, of a very prestigious family ... who doesn’t need money. He truly was a trusted adviser”.