Brazil president caught in bribes scandal

The accusations could bring Dilma Rousseff's second presidential term to an end
The accusations could bring Dilma Rousseff's second presidential term to an end
EVARISTO SA/GETTY IMAGES

Dilma Rousseff has become the first serving Brazilian president to be investigated by an electoral court after she was accused of accepting money that had been illegally siphoned from the state oil company to fund her campaign last year.

The accusations, which could bring her second presidential term to an end, allege that the leader of the Workers’ party and Michel Temer, her vice-president, engaged in “abuse of economic power, and of fraud, by funding campaign expenses . . . with donations from Petrobras contractor companies as part of the bribes distribution”.

The scandal at Petrobras — in which $2 billion is believed to have been skimmed off in inflated construction contracts and then passed to politicians as bribes — has engulfed many of the