Ex-President Michel Temer arrested in Brazil for corruption

One of the Engevix executives told prosecutors in a plea bargain testimony that he paid more than US$300,000 in 2014 to a company owned by a close Temer associate, Col. Joao Baptista Lima Filho. An arrest warrant was also issued for Lima Filho.

Globo Television showed images of the former president being accompanied by police in Sao Paulo, where Temer lives. Helicopter images showed Temer getting out of a police convoy at an airport, presumably to be brought to Rio de Janeiro and processed.

In a statement, Temer’s Brazilian Democratic Movement party called the arrest “haphazard.”

“The party hopes that the Justice Department re-establishes individual liberties and the presumption of innocence,” it read.

Breitas is overseeing the Rio portion of a massive corruption probe involving kickbacks to politicians and public officials. Since launching in March 2014, the so-called Car Wash investigation has led to the jailing of top businessmen and politicians, including ex-President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who Brazilians universally call Lula.

Former Judge Sergio Moro, who oversaw many Car Wash cases and became an internationally known anti-corruption crusader, stepped down at the end of last year to become justice minister.

Many worried that Moro’s absence could hurt the investigations. And the Car Wash probe has suffered a handful of recent defeats, including a decision by the Supreme Court to allow some corruption cases involving campaign finance, which figured heavily in the probe, to be tried by electoral courts.

This week, Moro himself suffered a setback when the speaker of the lower Chamber of Deputies in Congress slammed a tough-on-crime bill the former judge put forward and said it would only be considered after a major reform to the pension system.

Breitas’ decision to arrest Temer will go a long way to answering questions about the future of the probe.

“If Lula and Temer can go to jail, who cannot?” said Carlos Melo, political science professor at Insper University in Sao Paulo. “There are several formerly high-ranking politicians not in office at the moment, which makes them more exposed to police investigations.”

Temer, who was vice-president, came to the presidency in 2016 after President Dilma Rousseff was impeached and ousted from office for mismanaging the federal budget.

Rousseff and allies in her Workers’ Party accused Temer of orchestrating her ouster, which he denied.

From the get-go, Temer’s administration was hit with several scandals, including some involving the president himself. Temer’s approval ratings were routinely below 10 per cent, and he was frequently booed.

In the course of less than two years, three times the attorney general charged Temer with corruption. Because he was a sitting president, he could only be tried if two-thirds of the lower chamber in Congress agreed. Temer twice mustered enough support in Congress to avoid prosecution and his term ended before the third case proceeded far enough for Congress to vote.

Temer, 78, left office on Jan. 1 and no longer has the partial immunity that helped him avoid prosecution.

Asked about looming cases against him in December, Temer said he wasn’t worried and did not believe he would be arrested.

“I’m calm. I am not the least bit worried,” Temer said. “Those (charges) are such absurd things that a more objective and less passionate mind will see that and will say, “those allegations are irrelevant.”

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Savarese reported from Madrid.

Peter Prengaman And Mauricio Savarese, The Associated Press

by Canadian Press

Ex-President Michel Temer arrested in Brazil for corruption

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