The Revolution Devours Its Own: Prosecutor Who Led Charge Against Brazil’s Rouseff Was Just Arrested

Every “revolution” has it: the moment when the sequence of events unleashed by the initial decision ultimately boomerangs and takes down the very people who started the revolution. In Brazil, that would be the powerful former speaker of Brazil’s lower house, Eduardo Cunha, who spearheaded the ouster of President Dilma Rousseff, and who almost singlehandedly ushered in Michel Temer into the presidential office. Alas, for Cunha the “game of thrones” now appears to be over after he himself was arrested early on Wednesday as part of a sprawling graft probe involving state oil giant Petrobras.
As a reminder, Cunha initiated impeachment proceedings against Rousseff in December when he was speaker of the Chamber of Deputies. That led to a Senate vote to remove her from office in August.
Cunha, who until recently was a key ally of new President Temer, was accused of corruption, money laundering and tax evasion related to an oilfield purchase that Petrobras made in 2011 in the west African nation of Benin. Prosecutors said in a statement that they requested Cunha’s detention on the grounds that he represented a threat to the integrity of the investigation and was a flight risk. They also asked for bank accounts he holds totaling some $60 million to be frozen.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on Oct 19, 2016.