Brazilian Lawmaker Who Led Impeachment of President Is Arrested

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/20/world/americas/brazil-eduardo-cunha.html

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RIO DE JANEIRO — Eduardo Cunha, the former speaker of Brazil’s lower house of Congress who engineered the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff this year, was arrested Wednesday on corruption charges, federal prosecutors said.

Mr. Cunha, until recently one of the country’s most powerful and feared politicians, was taken into custody in the capital, Brasília, and flown to Curitiba, in the southern state of Paraná, where he could stand trial, according to a statement by the prosecutors’ office.

Mr. Cunha is facing multiple allegations, including accusations that he took as much as $40 million in bribes for himself and his allies from the state oil company, Petrobras. He also faces money-laundering charges as well as accusations that he interfered with the authorities’ investigation, prosecutors said.

Mr. Cunha said in a statement on Wednesday that there was no justification for his arrest, and he called it “an absurd decision.”

The arrest was ordered by Judge Sergio Moro, who is overseeing many of the cases related to the Petrobras investigation. Prosecutors requested Mr. Cunha’s detention, saying that he was a flight risk and a threat to the investigation.

Although he was a leader of the effort to impeach Ms. Rousseff and an ally of her successor, Michel Temer, Mr. Cunha was forced to step down as speaker in July because of the corruption allegations. Last month he was expelled from Congress over ethics violations.

His ouster stripped him of the legal protections against prosecution he had enjoyed as a legislator.

His arrest allows prosecutors and Judge Moro to counter mounting criticism that they were singling out politicians from Ms. Rousseff’s Workers’ Party, some political analysts say.

Mr. Cunha, a member of Mr. Temer’s Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, “is the first major politician outside of the Workers’ Party to be arrested” in the wide-ranging corruption scandals, said Mauricio Santoro, a professor of political science at the State University of Rio de Janeiro.

With the possibility looming that another Workers’ Party figure, former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, could be arrested in the coming weeks — he faces multiple charges and awaits trial on corruption and obstruction of justice charges — Mr. Cunha’s arrest could be seen as a way for Judge Moro to calm his critics.

“There won’t be any excuses anymore,” Mr. Santoro said. “If Cunha is in jail, they can go on and arrest everybody else.”

The arrest continues a remarkable fall for Mr. Cunha, who was one of Brazil’s most powerful figures and helped finance the campaigns of hundreds of legislators.

Mr. Temer and many of his allies distanced themselves from Mr. Cunha after Ms. Rousseff’s impeachment.

But now with the arrest of Mr. Cunha, members of Brazil’s political elite are undoubtedly concerned that he will cooperate with prosecutors and implicate others in the Petrobras case. Since the investigation began more than two years ago, prosecutors have used arrests as a way to press suspects to sign plea-bargain agreements and advance their prosecutions.