Brazilian politician who led Rousseff impeachment is expelled from office

Brazil’s political bloodletting claimed another high-profile victim on Monday when the lower house voted to expel its former speaker Eduardo Cunha for perjury, corruption and obstruction of justice.

The wily evangelical politician – often described as the Frank Underwood of Brazil – was the orchestrator of the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, but less than two weeks after his enemy was expelled from office, he too has been cast aside by the chamber he once dominated.

Cunha’s overwhelming defeat – by 450 votes to 10 with nine abstentions – strips him of parliamentary immunity and may be followed by criminal charges for his involvement in the bribery and kickback scandal at state-oil company Petrobras. He has also been banned from politics for eight years, a punishment more severe than that of Rousseff, who was ejected from office but maintains her political rights.

In his final speech to the house, Cunha insisted he had been sacrificed for political rather than legal reasons, and warned that others were likely to follow.

“It’s the price I’m paying for the country to be free of the Workers party. They are charging me the price for leading the impeachment process,” he told lawmakers. “Tomorrow, it will be you.”

It is not the first veiled threat Cunha has made in a career built on his knowledge of other politicians’ secrets and enhanced by his control over campaign pursestrings. This made him a powerful politician, but he was also feared by his peers and reviled by the public.

View image in fullscreen

When the result was announced just before midnight, some politicians made prison bars with their fingers and there were chants of “Fora Cunha!” (“Cunha out!”) in the chamber, which less than six months ago rang with praise from his supporters after he oversaw the first impeachment vote against Rousseff.

But since then the two adversaries have slugged each other to the floor. Cunha was forced to resign the speaker’s chair in July while he came under investigation by the ethics committee for abuse of power and other charges.

At the time, former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso noted: “Cunha was very functional in destroying Dilma; now he is being destroyed.”

Now Cunha has also been thrown out of his congressional seat, despite claims of innocence that will next have to be addressed to police. In echoes of Rousseff, Cunha claimed he was the victim of a political conspiracy and laid part of the blame on the media, especially the powerful Globo media group.

Public anger has been stirred by reports that Cunha stashed around $1.3m in illegal kickbacks in a secret Swiss bank account, that he intimidated opponents and enjoyed a lavish lifestyle that was far beyond the means of his declared annual income of $120,000.

Ahead of the vote on Monday, the ethics committee rapporteur Marcos Rogerio said there was indisputable evidence that Cunha had accounts in Switzerland that were “instruments to conceal tax evasion, launder money and receive kickbacks”. The money, he said, had come from an inflated purchase by Petrobras of an oil field in Benin.

Prosecutors previously leaked credit card statements showing that Cunha and his family splashed out $40,000 on a nine-day family holiday in Miami at the end of 2013, then followed this with similar shopping and restaurant sprees in Paris, New York and Zurich. Cunha and his wife also allegedly own a fleet of eight luxury cars, including a Porsche, which were registered under the name of Jesus.com and C3 Productions.

Cunha could yet take down former allies. In recent years, he has been one of three senior figures in the ruling Brazilian Democratic Movement party (PMDB), alongside current Brazilian president Michel Temer and upper house leader Renan Calheiros – all of whom benefited from the Petrobras corruption scheme.

The former speaker appears to have been the least cautious, apparently in the belief that he could not be touched. A trained economist, he was a protégé of Fernando Collor, the only previous president to have been impeached since the end of the military dictatorship in 1985.

He converted to the Assembly of God – one of the country’s biggest evangelical churches – and rose to notoriety as the outspoken host of a radio show on an evangelical station. With support from the Christian right, he won his first seat in the chamber of deputies in 2003 as a representative of Rio de Janeiro, and became speaker in 2015.

In polls, he is consistently among the most unpopular politicians in the nation. A Datafolha survey earlier this year found 77% of the voters wanted Cunha to be stripped of his mandate, compared with 61%-67% for Rousseff, who was blamed for the recession, political turmoil and failing to stop corruption.

The wrath of the public appears to have weighed more heavily on lawmakers than their fear of any secrets Cunha might reveal. Reflecting on the resounding opposition, politician Jandira Feghali noted ironically that it was “sad” that only two deputies came up to the microphone to defend Cunha, “despite the power he had”.

Another deputy, Edson Moreira, drew parallels with the French Revolution. “Robespierre sent Danton to the guillotine and he [himself] ended up on the guillotine,” he noted.

After the result was announced, Cunha said he was a victim of “political vengeance” ahead of mid-term elections in October, but told reporters he was planning to publish a book of his involvement in the impeachment process.

Asked if he had recorded conversations as other politicians have done, he claimed there was no need: “I have a good memory.”

What he chooses to remember may yet have significant repercussions. Antônio Imbassahy of the Social Democratic party of Brazil, urged Cunha to “tell all he knows so he can contribute to the country”.

If rumours of Cunha’s book of secrets are to be believed, the bloodletting may yet have some way to run.