Why did they arrest former Brazilian President Michel Temer

The day he handed over the presidential group to Jair Bolsonaro, Michel Temer lost the privileges that protected him from justice. Nearly three months later, the former president, aged 78, had been arrested for the Lava Jato scandal. With about 10 corruption cases brought against him, it was only a matter of time.

The detention of Temer was ordered by the federal judge of Rio de Janeiro, Marcelo Bretas, who also asked the arrest of the former Minister Wellington Moreira Franco, important collaborator of the former president of the party of the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB).

The Office of the Prosecutor came to ask two times before the Supreme Court, the opening of lawsuits for corruption against Temer while he was in power, following the dismissal of President Dilma Rousseff, but Congress refused to allow the proceedingsso that all the cases against him depended on the loss of the privileged jurisdiction with the end of his mandate.

Fear, an ex-president who appears in 10 investigations

According to the Brazilian website G1, the name of Temer appears in 10 causes related to the Lava Jato case, which has updated a network of bribes paid by major construction companies to politicians from almost all parties to obtain contracts with Petrobras and other state-owned companies.

Five of them are in the hands of the Federal Supreme Court because they were opened when Temer was president and they have already begun to be badyzed by trial judges. The other five investigations were opened in January this year, when Temer no longer had the privileged jurisdiction, by order of magistrate Luis Roberto Barroso.

According to G1, Temer is one of the main goals of judges investigating Lava Jato in Rio de Janeiro. The detention was ordered as part of an open investigation to verify the alleged facts. irregularities in contracts signed by companies already condemned by Lava Jato and Eletronuclear, the state company that operates the country's nuclear power plants.

According to justice, companies with contracts with Eletronuclear paid bribes to favor MDB leaders, the training led by Temer and whose leaders they controlled for many years all the state of the electricity sector from the country.

The case on which Bretas investigated concerns the complaint of the businessman Jose Antunes Sobrinho, owner of the construction company Engevix, who agreed to collaborate with the law and expose his accomplices of various corruption cases in exchange for reducing their sentences.

The businessman told the federal police that paid a million reais (more than $ 260,000) at the request of Colonel João Baptista Lima Filho, a close friend of Temer, Temer), to win one of the construction contracts for the Angra 3 nuclear power plant.

Shortly after taking office after Rousseff's dismissal, Temer was also accused by businessman Joesley Batista of ordering him buy the silence of MP Eduardo Cunha, after his arrest in the Lava Jato operation.

Batista recorded the conversation and the president was accused of "corruption, obstruction of justice and belonging to a criminal organization".

Brazilian Attorney General Rodrigo Janot also accused Temer of receiving a bribe of about 150,000 dollars from the Batista brothers, owners of the JBS refrigerator and the main financiers of the electoral campaigns in Brazil.

Temer has also been accused of receiving money for the campaign and his party. participate in the bribery schemes of Petrobrás and the public bank Caixa Econômica Federal, and even sell executive decrees favoring private companies.

In the words of the prosecutor, Fear "skewed" the various public offices he held, including that of president, putting them at the service of fictitious interests and committing intolerable acts that provoke social unrest and discredit of the institutions. .

On Thursday, Temer became the second head of state to be arrested in Brazil for Java Jato-related cases since Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (2003-2010) served his sentence since April. from last year, two convicted to 12 years in prison for bribery and money laundering.