Coup in world’s seventh-largest economy

and the TV-soap that is Brazil carries on - the anti-corruption Minister was ... umm ... corrupt :D
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/31/w...on&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0
The anticorruption minister of Brazil’s interim president, Michel Temer, resigned Monday night after a secret recording seemed to show that he tried to stymie the sweeping corruption investigation revolving around Petrobras, the national oil company.

The fall of Fabiano Silveira, whose title was minister of transparency, dealt another blow to a government that seems to limp from one scandal to the next just weeks after Mr. Temer replaced Dilma Rousseff. Ms. Rousseff was suspended as president to face claims of budgetary manipulation in an impeachment trial.

One of Mr. Temer’s top aides, Romero Jucá, stepped down last week as planning minister after another recording indicated that their centrist Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, or P.M.D.B., had sought Ms. Rousseff’s ouster to thwat the inquiry into the Petrobras graft scheme.

In an increasingly paranoid atmosphere in the capital, Brasília, members of the country’s political and business elite are secretly recording one another with the aim of reaching plea deals. Sergio Machado, a politician who was the chief executive of a Petrobras transportation unit for more than a decade, has turned over a trove of recordings to investigators.
 
PressTV-No fiscal wrongdoing by Rousseff: Audits
The Brazilian soap continues -
A team of independent auditors, comprised of career Senate budget technicians, released a 224-page report on Monday, which concluded there is no evidence that Rousseff participated in budget manipulation, one of the allegations that led to the opening of an impeachment process against her.
The report also said there is no reason to continue the impeachment against Rousseff.
but, "The senators, however, do not have to follow the findings in a Senate trial scheduled to be held in August, to convict or acquit Rousseff."
 
and it goes on ... no, not the Olympics - Brazil Senate sends President Rousseff to impeachment trial | News | DW.COM | 10.08.2016
Senators voted 59-21 to send Rousseff to an impeachment trial Wednesday after interim President Michel Temer, in temporary charge after Rousseff's suspension in May, had called on senators to proceed with the trial quickly.

He had told lawmaker he wanted to advance reforms to limit public spending and reform the pension system. "People need to know who the president is," he said.

If Rousseff is convicted and removed from office, Temer would be confirmed as president and serve out her term until 2018.

Going into the debate, Temer's associates were confident that 60 senators would vote for the trial to proceed. That is six more than the number needed to eventually convict Rousseff.

However, Temer himself may be implicated in the allegations of corruption. Jailed construction magnate Marcelo Odebrecht reportedly claimed Temer had received illegal campaign funding.
:rolleyes:
 
Brazil senate starts impeachment trial of President Dilma Rousseff
Brazil's senate on Thursday began deliberating whether to permanently remove President Dilma Rousseff from office, the final step in a leadership fight that has paralysed Congress and cast a pall over a nation in the midst of a severe recession.

Brazil's first female president is accused of illegally shifting money between government budgets to mask yawning deficits. Detractors say she did that to shore up support and argue those manoeuvres exacerbated the recession in Latin America's largest economy.
 
Brazil just voted to impeach their president
Brazil's Dilma Rousseff has been removed from presidential office after senators in Brasilia voted to impeach her.

She lost her effort to stay in power after a year-long struggle as senators voted 61-20 to remove her. The vice president, Michel Temer, 75, who has been serving as interim President of South America's largest economy since May, was sworn in as Brazil's new leader later on Wednesday and will serve out what would have been the remainder of Ms Rousseff's term.

“They think that they beat us, but they are wrong,” a still defiant Ms Rousseff told supporters outside the presidential palace hours after the vote, saying no fewer than 14 times that she had been the victim of a coup. In the process, she vowed also to form “the strongest, most tireless and most active opposition that a coup government could suffer.”
 
And just to make the circle complete -
Brazil arrests lawmaker who championed Rousseff's impeachment - France 24
Brazil arrests lawmaker who championed Rousseff's impeachment
Brazilian police on Wednesday arrested Eduardo Cunha who was one of the country's most powerful lawmakers and the architect of former president Dilma Rousseff's impeachment until he became engulfed in corruption charges.

Cunha, nicknamed Brazil's Frank Underwood after the scheming main character in the dark US political series "House of Cards," initiated the impeachment process that finally forced Rousseff out of office this August.

The left-wing president was found guilty of fiddling government accounts. However, she accused Cunha, from the conservative evangelical movement, of mounting a coup.

Cunha's triumph was short-lived, as allegations of massive bribe taking and money laundering in a corruption scheme centered on state oil company Petrobras caught up with him. In September he was stripped of his congressional seat.