Brazil’s Rousseff Seeks Impeachment Annulment After Key Confession

Former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff will seek to annul the impeachment that removed her from the presidency in 2016 based on a new confession that allegedly proves lawmakers bought votes to remove her from office.

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Rousseff's lawyer said the recent testimony demonstrates that the former president of the Lower House paid lawmakers to vote in favor of her removal, without evidence of crimes.

"It was shown that former lawmaker Eduardo Cunha bought votes from parliamentarians in favor of the impeachment," Rousseff's lawyer, Jose Eduardo Cardozo, said Monday.

The former president's defense team will base their argument on confessions from Lucio Funaro, who said in court that he helped Cunha buy votes among the officials in the Lower House.

Funaro, a broker, confessed to the Attorney General's office that he paid Cunha a million reais, about US$315,000, to buy votes among the lawmakers to remove Rousseff from power in an impeachment trial that began in May 2016.

They claimed Rousseff had committed a crime by allegedly authorizing fiscal maneuvers to hide the deficit of the state budget.

"We understand that in defense of the Constitution and the democratic state of law the judiciary has to rule, determining the annulment of the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff by notorious misuse of power and by the absence of any evidence of committing crimes of responsibility," Cardozo said.

The lawyer said he will ask to include the confession in the petition to the Supreme Court in order to annul the dismissal of "a legitimately-elected president."

Funaro, who has been in prison for more than a year, was one of several key people involved in a corruption scheme inside the ruling Brazilian Democratic Movement party, which current President Michel Temer belongs to.