Key Brazil impeachment figure accused of hiding US$16m

As head of the Lower House, Cunha has the authority to accept or reject impeachment demands against Rousseff.

Mendes asked the Federal Police to probe whether Rousseffs campaign received a few of the estimated $2 billion that was diverted from state-controlled oil company Petrobras as part of a decade-long contract-rigging and kickback scheme.

Supreme Court justices issued injunctions on October 13 that temporarily limit legislators’ power to initiate proceedings if the lower house president shelves a request.

The controversial central figure in attempts to impeach Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff said Wednesday he will appeal a Supreme Court decision putting the brakes on the opposition’s push to unseat her.

“The fact that I have to take decisions that a few might see as a truce and others as a war is only a question of interpretation”, Cunha said in response to the rumor.

“That means Cunha cannot go on with the process as he intended, which has been a blow for the impeachment process, but it does not, in any way, make it impossible for it to occur”, Lucas de Aragão, a political analyst at Arko Advice, told IBTimes UK.

Meanwhile, the Superior Electoral Court (Tribunal Superior Eleitoral, TSE) has ruled it would begin examining Rousseff’s accounts of last year’s electoral campaign.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has vowed to bring the economy back growing again, calling for unity to overcome the economic crisis.

If Cunha accepts one of the petitions, a parliamentary commission with representatives of all parties would analyze it and put it to a lower house vote. If impeachment is backed by two-thirds of lawmakers, official impeachment hearings will then move to the Senate, which will vote whether to impeach the president. The president’s aides fear Cunha could try to speed up the impeachment process because he is under pressure to resign as speaker following the discovery of Swiss bank accounts in connection with corruption charges against him. “Brasilia is living day by day, no one knows exactly what can happen because we see big news breaking overnight, we don’t know if a new corruption scandal may arise and distress further the government”. Two leftist parties asked the house ethics committee on Tuesday to remove the speaker for lying about the Swiss accounts past year to a parliamentary inquiry into the Petrobras scandal. Conservative parties called for Cunha’s resignation on Friday.

The possible irregularities in Rousseffs campaign accounts have been cited by the opposition as potential grounds for impeachment.