Rousseff vows to ‘never resign’ over growing scandal

Agence France-Presse

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Rousseff vows to ‘never resign’ over growing scandal

EPA

The leftist leader accuses her opponents of seeking to stage a 'coup against democracy,' with impeachment proceedings and mass protests calling for her ouster

BRASILIA, Brazil – Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff said Tuesday, March 22, she had committed no crime and would “never resign” despite corruption allegations, as the scandal threatening her government escalated with dozens of new arrests.

In a defiant speech from the presidential palace, the leftist leader accused her opponents of seeking to stage a “coup against democracy,” with impeachment proceedings and mass protests calling for her ouster.

“I will never resign,” she told a cheering crowd of supporters and legal experts she had gathered to back her. “Not under any circumstances.”

Rousseff’s presidency appears to be in peril as she fights impeachment, protests, recession and scandal.

And her decision to call her predecessor and mentor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, to the rescue backfired last week when a Supreme Court judge blocked his appointment as her chief of staff over pending corruption charges.

Another high court judge refused Tuesday to rule on Lula’s request to overturn that decision, meaning the former president lacks ministerial immunity and remains exposed to possible arrest.

Lula, who presided over a booming Brazil from 2003 to 2011, faces money-laundering charges related to a multibillion-dollar corruption scandal centered on state oil company Petrobras that has unleashed a political crisis.

The scandal expanded yet again as federal police staged raids in nine states across the country to execute 43 arrest warrants or temporary detention orders.

The raids targeted what investigators called a “professional and institutionalized” bribe-paying system at construction giant Odebrecht.

Investigators accuse Odebrecht of colluding with competitors to divvy up Petrobras contracts over the course of a decade, paying huge bribes and then inflating the contracts by even larger amounts.

Former chief executive Marcelo Odebrecht was sentenced to nearly 20 years in prison earlier this month, but prosecutors said he had shown the “audacity” to keep ordering bribe payments even after his detention.

Investigators said the bribes were paid out at hotels, in cash.

“We observed payments of more than nine million reals ($2.5 million) in cash in a single day,” prosecutor Laura Goncalves Tesser told a press conference.

More revelations to come

In an indication the scandal may spread much further, investigators said one of the projects for which Odebrecht paid bribes was the Sao Paulo stadium that hosted the opening match of the 2014 World Cup.

Prosecutor Carlos dos Santos Lima stressed that the sprawling investigation “is going to touch other areas besides the oil sector.”

“A lot of things are going to be discovered,” he told a press conference.

The crisis risks destabilizing Brazil, warned a United Nations panel for the region.

“We are alarmed to see the democratic stability of your homeland threatened,” said Alicia Barcena, the head of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, in an open letter to Rousseff.

Investigators say the ruling Workers’ Party was directly involved in the corruption, which Petrobras estimates cost it more than $2 billion.

Rousseff chaired Petrobras during much of the period under investigation, but has not been charged.

Dwindling support in Congress

Rousseff is accused of manipulating the government’s accounts to boost public spending during her re-election campaign and hide the magnitude of the recession.

Her opponents would like to expand the official accusation to include explosive allegations over the weekend that she used some of the proceeds from the Petrobras bribery scheme to fund her presidential campaigns.

Senator Delcidio do Amaral, who is charged in the case, said Rousseff “knew everything” about the corruption and directly benefited from it.

Newspaper O Globo reported Tuesday that Rousseff’s camp now calculates the number of lawmakers in the lower house of Congress who are loyal to the president has fallen from about 250 two weeks ago to 172.

That is dangerously close to the minimum of 171 needed to block a two-thirds vote to open an impeachment trial.

Sixty-eight percent of Brazilians favor impeaching Rousseff, according to pollsters.

The crisis has triggered huge, angry protests for and against the president, laying bare sharp divisions in the country of 200 million people, just months before it hosts the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro in August. – Moises Avila, AFP / Rappler.com

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