BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil’s top prosecutor on Friday charged six lawmakers from President Michel Temer’s Brazilian Democracy Movement Party (PMDB) with forming a criminal organization, the latest in a barrage of charges in the country’s sprawling corruption scandal.

FILE PHOTO - Brazil's President Michel Temer attends the 'Dialogue of Emerging Market and Developing Countries' on the sideline of the 2017 BRICS Summit in Xiamen, Fujian province, China, 05 September 2017.REUTERS/Wu Hong/Pool

Those accused by prosecutor Rodrigo Janot in a filing with the Supreme Court include former senator and president Jose Sarney, the government’s leader in the Senate Romero Juca and four other current senators.

A corruption scandal involving cartels of companies bribing officials for public contracts has enveloped most of Brazil’s political elite with Janot expected to issue another charge against Temer in coming weeks.

Temer defeated a first corruption charge from Janot, when the lower house of Congress voted not to allow it to proceed to trial.

Separately on Friday, the Supreme Court said it would consider next week requests from Temer that would block Janot from issuing further charges.

In the charges against the senators, Janot alleges the group unduly received 864 million reais ($279.84 million) and generated related losses of 5.5 billion reais for state-controlled oil firm Petrobras and 113 million reais for its subsidiary Transpetro.

Transpetro’s former president, Sergio Machado, was also charged.

The PMDB said in a statement that the prosecutor lacked evidence and that it trusted the Supreme Court would set the charges aside.

Juca said in a statement he believes the Supreme Court will seriously analyze the charges and he hopes for a speedy investigation.

A representative for Machado said he continues to collaborate with authorities, providing evidence of crimes involving politicians and Transpetro suppliers that resulted in several cases being filed.

Janot’s latest charges echo those against former presidents Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Dilma Rousseff and six other members of the Workers Party for criminal organization earlier this week. Lula and Rousseff deny the charges.

($1 = 3.0875 reais)</s>BRASILIA: Brazil's top prosecutor on Friday charged six lawmakers from President Michel Temer's Brazilian Democracy Movement Party (PMDB) with forming a criminal organization, the latest in a barrage of charges in Brazil's sprawling corruption scandal.

Those accused by Rodrigo Janot in a filing with the Supreme Court include former senator and president Jose Sarney, the government's leader in the senate Romero Juca and four other current senators.

A corruption scandal involving cartels of companies bribing officials for public contracts has enveloped most of Brazil's political elite with Janot expected to issue another charge against Temer in coming weeks.

Temer defeated a first corruption charge from Janot, when the lower house of Congress voted not to allow it to proceed to trial.

Separately on Friday, the Supreme Court said it would consider next week requests from Temer that would block Janot from issuing further charges.

In the charges against the senators, Janot alleges the group unduly received 864 million reais (US$279.84 million) and generated related losses of 5.5 billion reais for state-controlled oil firm Petrobras and 113 million reais for its subsidiary Transpetro.

Transpetro's former president, Sergio Machado, was also charged.

The PMDB said in a statement that the prosecutor lacked evidence and that it trusted the Supreme Court would set the charges aside.

Juca said in a statement he believes the Supreme Court will seriously analyze the charges and he hopes for a speedy investigation.

Janot's latest charges echo those against former presidents Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Dilma Rousseff and six other members of the Workers Party for criminal organization earlier this week. Lula and Rousseff deny the charges.</s>SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Brazilian Vice President Michel Temer sent a personal letter to President Dilma Rousseff regarding her government’s distrust of him and his fractious Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, according to a statement from his office on Twitter on Monday.

Temer, the head of the PMDB party, has not publicly taken a position on impeachment proceedings being driven by some members of his party, the largest in the governing coalition. Temer’s public silence has bolstered speculation he is positioning himself to become president if she is impeached.</s>Authorities detained a former Brazilian cabinet minister on Friday, three days after police found the equivalent of more than $16 million in cash that allegedly belonging to him.

Police said the money was found in suitcases and cardboard boxes in an apartment used by Geddel Vieira Lima, a close ally of President Michel Temer and former legislative affairs minister.

The owner of the apartment told police he lent it to Lima to store objects belonging to his late father.

Lima had been sent to prison July 3 on suspicion of obstruction of justice. His arrest was part of a corruption investigation into a government-controlled bank. Nine days later he was placed under house arrest, which was revoked on Friday.

Also Friday, Attorney General Rodrigo Janot filed charges at the Supreme Court against five sitting senators of the ruling Brazilian Democratic Movement Party and an ex-senator of the Brazilian Social Democracy Party.

He also filed charges against former Sen. Jose Sarney who served as Brazil's president between 1985 and 1990.

Janot charged the seven men with forming a "criminal organization" to obtain the equivalent of close to $280 million in bribes from suppliers of state-owned oil company Petrobras.

The charges are part of a huge corruption investigation into a scheme to inflate state contracts in order to pay kickbacks and bribes to politicians. The probe has already netted dozens of executives and senior politicians. Next, the justice handling the probe will decide whether to accept the charges.</s>BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff lost a key legal battle when a federal audit court rejected her government’s accounts from 2014 on Wednesday, paving the way for opponents to try to impeach her.

Congress must still decide whether she broke Brazil’s budget law, an impeachable offense.

Following are the steps of a presidential impeachment under Brazil’s Constitution:

1) Any citizen can file an impeachment request to Congress. More than 20 have already been filed to impeach Rousseff. Most have been shelved as groundless, but seven are under study by the speaker of the lower house, Eduardo Cunha, a declared enemy of the president.

2) Cunha has the power to decide whether to accept one of the requests. A special committee made up of members of all parties analyses the request, which needs two-thirds support, or 342 of the votes in the lower house, for an impeachment trial to begin in the Senate. Cunha’s own position has been shaken by corruption charges against him and he is under pressure to explain undeclared Swiss bank accounts that prosecutors have found in his name. Rousseff appears to have enough votes at present to block an impeachment vote.

3) If she lost the lower house vote, the president would be suspended pending the trial in the Senate, and her vice president Michel Temer would become acting president. The Senate would have 180 days to conduct a trial, chaired by the president of the Supreme Court.

4) In the Senate, two-thirds support, or 54 of the 81 senators, is needed to impeach the president.

5) If Rousseff is impeached, Temer would serve as president for the remainder of the term. Temer, however, could also be ousted if an investigation currently underway by Brazil’s top electoral authority finds that the Rousseff-Temer election campaign broke the law, including the use of kickback money from the Petrobras graft scandal. If Temer were also ousted, Cunha would take over temporarily and either a new election would be called within 90 days or Congress would pick the next president, depending on how much of Rousseff’s term is left.</s>BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazilian Vice President Michel Temer has further distanced himself from the president with a letter of complaints, moving into a position from which his allies say he can make a full break from her troubled government or lead the country outright if she is impeached by Congress.

In a letter to President Dilma Rousseff, following days of speculation regarding a growing rift between them, Temer grumbled that Rousseff sidelined him from major cabinet decisions and no longer trusted his Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), her main ally in the governing coalition.

His letter was published by O Globo newspaper and its contents were confirmed by Temer aides.

The PMDB, an ideologically amorphous party with a history of moving across the political spectrum and aligning itself with power, is divided over impeachment proceedings begun last week against Rousseff, a leftist who first took office in 2011.

The opposition launched the impeachment effort charging that Rousseff used accounting tricks to disguise the cost of economic stimulus measures as she campaigned for re-election last year. A Congressional auditor said the practices broke public finance laws.

The president, who has denied wrongdoing, currently appears to enjoy enough support in Congress to defeat an impeachment vote, a lengthy process expected to last well into next year.

But Temer controls crucial votes of moderates in his party who together could tip the scales against the president, whose popularity has tanked in the midst of a severe recession and a massive corruption scandal involving state oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA, or Petrobras.

Uncertainty over Brazil’s political future has weakened its currency and driven down the Sao Paulo stock market, though it jumped last week when the speaker of the lower house of Congress, Eduardo Cunha, launched the impeachment process.

Midday Wednesday, shares comprising the main index at the São Paulo stock exchange were trading nearly 2 percent lower than Monday’s close.

Temer’s letter followed signs of dwindling support for the president in the PMDB. Last Friday, one of seven PMDB ministers in Rousseff’s cabinet and a close aide to Temer resigned. More PMDB ministers could follow, party officials said.

“The PMDB is moving its players forward, one by one,” said one senior PMDB official who asked not to be named.

“Temer is ready,” he said, confirming the vice president’s readiness to abandon Rousseff outright if she were to be forced from office.

The PMDB last month unveiled a business-friendly economic platform to lay out policies for pulling Brazil out of its deepest recession in more than 25 years. Brazil’s anxious business sector, and even some political rivals from opposition parties, increasingly see Temer as a leader who can restore calm and put Brazil back on a growth path.

Temer’s relations with Rousseff have been practically frozen since he remarked to reporters in August that Brazil needed someone to unite the country, a sign evident to all Brazilians that he was prepared to step up to the plate.

“MADAM, YOU DO NOT TRUST ME”

The vice president, a constitutional scholar and lawyer by training, has not commented directly on the impeachment effort. Leaders of Rousseff’s leftist Workers’ Party see his silence as evidence that Temer is conspiring behind their backs to unseat the president and step into her shoes.

In the letter, Temer vented his frustrations. He said he had been little more than window dressing in her first term, was not consulted on economic policy and was sought by Rousseff only to deliver votes in Congress and resolve political crises.

He griped that he had not been invited to attend a Rousseff meeting with U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, even though he said he is friends with the American leader.

Temer said Rousseff had no right to distrust him and his party which has provided the support she needed to govern and, particularly, the votes to push fiscal austerity measures through Congress to relieve a fiscal crunch.

“I have kept the PMDB united behind your government,” even though 40 percent of its members wanted to leave break away from the alliance with the Workers’ Party, he wrote in the letter.

“I know, madam, that you do not trust me or the PMDB today, and will not trust us tomorrow.”

Senior party official and aides in Temer’s office deny that he has begun talks with other parties on forming a future government, though Temer himself has said he regularly talks with other parties, including the main opposition Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB).

Agreement with the PSDB, former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s party, would be vital for a Temer government to pass reforms needed to control a fiscal deficit that is expected to cost Brazil its prized investment grade credit rating next year.</s>BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil’s Vice President Michel Temer said on Tuesday he is not seeking to run for president in 2018, but his PMDB party is keen to launch its own candidate and has released a pro-business economic agenda as its platform.

The PMDB, the largest party in Brazil’s ruling coalition, has clashed repeatedly with President Dilma Rousseff and her leftist Worker’s Party this year over the handling of the sharpest recession in 25 years, and plans to leave her government before the 2018 campaign.

“Temer for president!” supporters chanted as he arrived at a meeting of his centrist party in Brasilia, where members openly criticized Rousseff and called for an immediate break with her government.

Playing down his own ambitions, Temer said Tuesday’s meeting was called to debate an economic program and not the parting of ways with Rousseff’s embattled government.

Rousseff has become the most unpopular Brazilian president in a generation and is facing calls for her impeachment even within the ranks of officially allied parties such as the PMDB.

A kickback scandal at state-run oil company Petrobras has also hurt Rousseff, although she has not been implicated - unlike PMDB leaders, including house speaker Eduardo Cunha who is charged with taking a $5 million bribe.

Most political analysts see Temer’s PMDB party positioning itself to take over if Rousseff is impeached and preparing to campaign for its own candidates in mayoral elections next year.

The PMDB’s economic program criticized Rousseff’s excessive intervention in the economy and called for greater concessions to private initiative, even in the tapping of Brazil’s huge offshore oil reserves.

The program proposes to keep public spending growing less than the overall economy, ending mandatory spending on health and education and eliminating the indexing of pensions and other payments to control Brazil’s widening fiscal deficit.

Party leaders tried to focus Tuesday’s meeting on economic policy instead of relations with the Rousseff government.

Eliseu Padilha, one of seven PMDB ministers in Rousseff’s Cabinet, said the party will have to break with the government when it launches its own candidate. That could be decided at a party convention in March, he told Reuters.

“Then we would have to have an eye-to-eye discussion with President Rousseff and the Workers’ Party,” he said. “But, for now, a majority of the party wants to continue helping Brazil by helping this government.”</s>SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Brazil’s Vice President Michel Temer, who would succeed President Dilma Rousseff should she be impeached, said the two had agreed at a meeting on Wednesday to have as productive a relationship as possible.

Temer would become president should Rousseff depart as a result of current impeachment proceedings. He declined to give any more information about what was discussed in the meeting.</s>RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — A former minister and ally of embattled President Michel Temer has been taken arrested.

 The high-profile arrest comes Tuesday just hours before Brazil’s top electoral court begins the judgment phase in a trial that could result in Temer’s ouster.

Former Tourism Minister Henrique Eduardo Alves was taken into custody on allegations of corruption related to construction of a 2014 World Cup stadium in Natal.

Globo News captured images of Alves being arrested by federal police. Officials held a news conference later.

 Alves was tourism minister under President Dilma Rousseff and Temer, who assumed the country’s top post last year when Rousseff was removed for illegally managing the federal budget.

The arrest came before the Superior Electoral Court met to study allegations the 2014 Rousseff-Temer ticket received illegal campaign financing.</s>Brazil’s top prosecutor on Tuesday charged former Presidents Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff along with fellow Workers Party members with forming a criminal organization, the latest accusations in Brazil’s sprawling corruption scandal

The prosecutor, Rodrigo Janot, alleged that eight members of the Workers Party, including Lula and Rousseff, and two ex finance ministers, Mantega and Pelocci, committed a series of crimes involving state-owned oil firm Petrobras such as cartel formation, corruption and money laundering.

They were the first criminal charges to be leveled against Rousseff, who was impeached in 2016 for breaking budgetary laws.

The 230-page document filed with the Supreme Court accused Lula of heading the organization.

Lula’s lawyer said the law was being misused to persecute the former president.

The Workers Party said in a statement that the charges were baseless and being used to divert attention from other investigations, including one into a former federal prosecutor, referring to a case Janot announced on Monday.

A representative for Rousseff said the prosecutor’s office had offered no evidence of the crimes and called on the Supreme Court to guarantee the right to defend against them.

Lula, who is still Brazil’s most popular politician, is appealing a corruption conviction that would bar him from running for president in 2018. He faces four other corruption trials.

The charges stem from the Operation Car Wash investigation that uncovered a cartel of companies paying bribes to officials to secure Petrobras contracts, revelations that have spawned a host of investigations that has shaken Brazil’s political system and economy.
Brazilian prosecutor Rodrigo Janot files charges in the Supreme Court against officials in President Michel Temer's Brazilian Democratic Movement Party accusing them of forming a criminal organization. Earlier the Court said, next week, it will consider Temer's request to block Janot from issuing further charges.