Reuters/Brasilia
A group of Brazilian congressmen will seek the removal of lower house speaker Eduardo Cunha on ethical grounds after prosecutors confirmed the existence of undeclared bank accounts in his name in Switzerland, the leader of the leftist PSOL party said.
Cunha, who has been charged with corruption for allegedly receiving a $5mn bribe in the Petrobras kickback scandal, denied holding Swiss bank accounts before a congressional inquiry into the massive graft scheme at the state-run oil company.
But Brazil’s prosecutor general said in a statement to one of the lawmakers, Chico Alencar of the PSOL, that Swiss authorities had confirmed the existence of the accounts and froze their assets on the suspicion of money laundering.
Alencar and other lawmakers plan to ask the lower house’s ethics council to look into the case next week and rule on the removal of the speaker for lying about the accounts.
“All the parties that have kept silent over this will now have to take a position in the Ethics Committee,” Alencar told reporters, waving a document he had been sent by the prosecutor general.
The prosecutor general’s office confirmed the statement had been sent to Alencar.
Third in the line of presidential succession, Cunha is a key figure in Brazil’s political crisis because he can decide whether to open impeachment proceedings against President Dilma Rousseff, something her opponents are seeking.
Rousseff suffered two legal setbacks this week that have opened a possible path toward her impeachment as Brazil’s economy crumbles, but the prospect still seems distant amid the country’s political stalemate.
On Tuesday, an electoral court allowed a lawsuit to advance that seeks to annul last year’s presidential election, in which Rousseff won a second four-year term, over allegations of illegal campaign funding. The following day, Brazil’s government-accounting watchdog found that the Rousseff administration manipulated the country’s 2014 fiscal accounts to mask a ballooning deficit, a potentially impeachable offence. Rousseff has denied wrongdoing in both cases, and her supporters insist she isn’t going anywhere.
The Folha de S.Paulo newspaper reported on Thursday that Cunha’s accounts at Julius Baer held $2.4mn in investment funds. Folha did not cite its sources for the information that it said the bank provided to Swiss authorities.
Cunha has repeatedly denied receiving bribe money and has refused to answer questions about the Swiss accounts.
President of Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies Eduardo Cunha reacts during a session of the chamber in Brasilia, Brazil, September 22, 2015. REUTERS/Uesle
