Brazil court rules against Rousseff, opens way for impeachment

Brazil’s electoral authority found grounds to investigate Dilma Rousseff’s 2014 re-election campaign.

TSE officials said the court will investigate Ms Rousseff’s election campaign to see if it was funded by illegal money, including donations originating from the kickback scandal that has engulfed Petrobras.

The electoral court announced late Tuesday that it would determine whether Rousseff and Vice President Michel Temer, who were in office during the re-election campaign, had abused their power.

Although the ruling is not legally binding, it could be used by the opposition to build a case for Ms Rousseff’s impeachment in a Congress increasingly hostile to the unpopular leftist.

“Brazilian democracy is strong enough to prevent these attempts at a coup d’etat”, Rousseff said on Wednesday in a radio interview. The administration denies any wrongdoing.

Justice Minister Jose Eduardo Cardozo tried to downplay the action on Wednesday, however, saying the investigation was “run of the mill” and accused the opposition of “blowing it out of proportion”.

The TSE investigation was requested by the main opposition party, the Social Democratic Party of Brazil (PSDB), whose leader, Mr Aecio Neves, narrowly lost to Ms Rousseff last October.

Later on Wednesday, Brazil’s federal audit court is expected to reject her government’s accounts for 2014 because budget results were manipulated.

Meanwhile the Congress yesterday postponed for a fourth time voting on whether to overrule Rousseff’s vetoes of two spending bills in a defeat for her government as it scrambles for support to rebalance overdrawn public accounts.

Until now, the president has managed to avoid being implicated in the ever-widening Petrobras scandal. Rousseff was also the chairwoman of Petrobras during the time when investigators say much of the corruption took place.

The postponement highlighted Rousseff’s political isolation as she struggles to stave off impeachment efforts amid Brazil’s worst corruption scandal and the deepest recession in 25 years.