Brazil's Supreme Court will investigate the speakers of both houses of Congress and 32 other sitting politicians in connection with a multibillion-dollar kickback scheme at state-controlled oil company Petrobras The scandal has shaken the political establishment and undermined support for President Dilma Rousseff, who was narrowly re-elected last year and is struggling to stave off an economic recession and a downgrade by credit rating agencies.
A court official said on Friday that 12 senators and 22 congressmen from five parties are under investigation, all but one from Rousseff's governing coalition. The most prominent are the president of the Senate, Renan Calheiros, and the Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, Eduardo Cunha, both of the PMDB, Brazil's largest party and Rousseff's main coalition ally.
The Progressive Party has 21 members under investigation, the PMDB six and the Workers' Party five, including Senator Gleisi Hoffmann, Rousseff's chief of staff during her first term. The party's treasurer Jo?o Vaccari will be investigated. Only one opposition politician, Senator Antonio Anastasia, of the PSDB party, was on the list, which includes Senator Fernando Collor de Mello, a former president who resigned in 1992 to avoid impeachment for corruption.
Under Brazilian law, elected politicians can only be tried by the highest court, which must now decide with the help of prosecutors whether there is enough proof to put them on trial. The investigation could take years. Brazil's largest political corruption case until now, involving monthly payments to lawmakers in return for support in Congress for Rousseff's Workers' Party, took seven years to get to trial in 2012.
"The political situation is going to get even worse for the president," a senator in the ruling Workers' Party told Reuters, on the condition that he not be named. "There is a widespread feeling among the political class, especially in the PMDB, that the government manipulated the list of the lawmakers involved in the investigation to lessen the damage for the Workers' Party," the senator said. He said lawmakers were planning to block other austerity measures.
Rousseff faces more trouble in Congress from a parliamentary inquiry commission set up to look into the corruption scandal. Its first witness called to testify will be former Petrobras manager, Pedro Barusco, who has said in a plea bargain statement made public that the Workers' Party received up to $200 million from bribes paid on Petrobras contracts.