BRASILIA: A Brazilian Supreme Court justice on Thursday suspended Eduardo Cunha, the senior lawmaker at the center of efforts to impeach President Dilma Rousseff, citing his attempt to obstruct a probe into his alleged corruption.
The speaker of Brazil’s lower house of Congress is the architect of the impeachment drive which is expected to see Rousseff forced to step aside from office on Wednesday.
Despite facing criminal charges including bribery and hiding money in Swiss bank accounts, Cunha has survived months of attempts by prosecutors and a congressional ethics committee to see him brought to justice.
A master backroom political operator, he is widely seen as the key to getting the impeachment proceedings green-lighted by the lower house in April and sent to the Senate, which will vote on opening a trial and suspending Rousseff Wednesday.
But the man Brazilians refer to as a real-life Frank Underwood — the corrupt US politician in the hit Netflix series “House of Cards” — appeared finally to have been brought down by Justice Teori Zavaski.
The ruling reflected concerns on the Supreme Court that with Rousseff suspended and replaced by her vice president, Michel Temer, Cunha would have moved up to first on the presidential succession list.
Zavaski said in his ruling “there is not the least doubt that the suspect does not meet the minimum personal requirements for fully exercising the functions of speaker of the chamber of deputies at this time.”
The speaker of Brazil’s lower house of Congress is the architect of the impeachment drive which is expected to see Rousseff forced to step aside from office on Wednesday.
Despite facing criminal charges including bribery and hiding money in Swiss bank accounts, Cunha has survived months of attempts by prosecutors and a congressional ethics committee to see him brought to justice.
A master backroom political operator, he is widely seen as the key to getting the impeachment proceedings green-lighted by the lower house in April and sent to the Senate, which will vote on opening a trial and suspending Rousseff Wednesday.
But the man Brazilians refer to as a real-life Frank Underwood — the corrupt US politician in the hit Netflix series “House of Cards” — appeared finally to have been brought down by Justice Teori Zavaski.
The ruling reflected concerns on the Supreme Court that with Rousseff suspended and replaced by her vice president, Michel Temer, Cunha would have moved up to first on the presidential succession list.
Zavaski said in his ruling “there is not the least doubt that the suspect does not meet the minimum personal requirements for fully exercising the functions of speaker of the chamber of deputies at this time.”
