The charging of another former Brazilian president raises questions about the government’s big pensions reform
OPERATION CAR WASH, Brazil’s sweeping anti-corruption investigation, has snared yet another president. Michel Temer, who became head of state in 2016 following the impeachment of his predecessor, Dilma Rousseff, was arrested by federal police on the morning of March 21st while driving in São Paulo. Federal prosecutors have accused him of running a “criminal organisation” during the construction of a nuclear power plant in Angra dos Reis, just south of Rio de Janeiro.
Nine other people, including a former minister of mines and energy in Mr Temer’s government, have also been arrested. The prosecutors, who called their investigation “Operation Radioactivity”, accuse the group of forming a cartel, money-laundering and conducting a fraudulent bidding process. The accused have not yet responded to the charges.
While he was in office, Mr Temer became the first sitting president in Brazilian history to be charged with corruption . On that occasion, the lower house of Congress voted, in 2017, to block his trial in the Supreme Court. Brazilian presidents enjoy immunity from most criminal prosecutions. Mr Temer has been charged now having lost his immunity when the current president, Jair Bolsonaro, was sworn in earlier this year.
His arrest has set off a political storm. Mr Temer’s Brazilian Democratic Movement called the action “haphazard”. The leftist Workers’ party, which had criticised Mr Temer for his role in the impeachment of Ms Rousseff, said it hoped the arrest is not “just speculation and claims with no proof”. The wider question is whether it might have political ramifications. Many investors fear that political turmoil, and opposition from the BDM, might make it harder for the government to get its most important policy, a sweeping reform of the pensions system unveiled in February, through Congress. Such worries pushed São Paulo’s Bovespa stock exchange down by 2% when news of the arrest broke; the real fell by 1.4% against the dollar.
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