A businessman at the centre of a corruption investigation that is embroiling an expanding circle of Brazil’s top politicians has alleged that the country’s president accepted an undeclared $3 million “political contribution”.
President Temer, who only came to power in August after his party led the impeachment of his former boss, the elected president Dilma Rousseff, was named 44 times in testimony by a former top executive at the construction conglomerate Odebrecht.
The accusations came in 82 pages of testimony by Cláudio Melo Filho, the former Odebrecht director, who accepted a plea bargain after he was arrested on corruption charges.
He alleged that in 2014, when Mr Temer was elected Mrs Rousseff’s vice-president and was head of his Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), he accepted $3 million in illegal campaign donations, Folha de Sao Paulo, a newspaper, reported.
The company’s president is already in jail on corruption charges. Mr Temer has denied the charges. His political survival is threatened by allegations that he, members of his cabinet and his party’s leaders received payments from the company.
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Opposition members of congress have already called for the president’s impeachment after his own culture minister accused Mr Temer of having asked him to bend the zoning rules in a historic city centre to allow a political ally to build an apartment block which had been denied a permit.
The latest accusations come after the country’s political and business elite have been decimated by corruption allegations, and congress has been accused by prosecutors of trying to water down laws that would help to root out graft among their ranks. About 70 politicians are facing trial, and the testimony of detained Odebrecht’s officials has sent shockwaves through congress.
Eduardo Paes, the former mayor of Rio de Janeiro who stepped down in October after overseeing the Olympics, was reportedly named by another detained Odebrecht executive as having accepted more than $3 million in illegal campaign donations.
Mr Paes had already had his assets frozen last week while investigators look into accusations that he illegally waived an environmental impact report on the capital city’s Olympic golf course, which environmental activists say was built illegally on a nature reserve. Mr Paes has denied the charges.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the former president of Brazil, has been indicted on corruption charges linked to a construction company, while two former governors of Rio have been arrested on charges of illegal campaign financing.