Stephen Lendman

Former Brazilian Chamber of Deputies president Eduardo Cunha was convicted on corruption and related charges in connection with Operation Car Wash, a scandal involving state-owned oil company Petrobras.

Last May, Brazil’s Supreme Court suspended him as lower house speaker for attempting to intimidate members of Congress and obstruct investigations into corruption allegations.

In September, the Chamber of Deputies stripped him of his position for breaching parliamentary decorum for lying about secret offshore accounts he maintained.

Accused of taking millions of dollars in bribes, he hid his wealth in foreign tax havens - like many other crooked politicians and others with ill-gotten gains.

Cunha was instrumental in ousting democratically elected Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff last August, a coup plot on fabricated charges - phony claims about budget manipulations, nothing improper about what she did, a practice many governments employ, notably America.

On Thursday, Cunha was sentenced to 15 years in prison on charges of corruption, money laundering, and tax evasion. His power-broker days are over.

Until his October 2016 arrest, he was one of Brazil’s most influential politicians. He used his position for ill-gotten gains, along with engineering Rousseff’s ouster.

Michel Temer replaced her, heading Brazil’s illegitimately installed coup d’etat regime, a deplorable figure, widely reviled, praised by the Obama administration, involved in the coup plot.

Before his downfall and conviction, Cunha was next in line for Brazil’s presidency.

In pronouncing sentence, federal Judge Sergio Moro said “(t)he responsibility of a federal parliamentarian is enormous, and therefore so is his guilt when he commits crimes.”

“There is no bigger crime than that of trying to use one’s parliamentary mandate and the sacred trust the people place in it to obtain personal gain.”

Cunha’s lawyers said they’ll appeal. He’ll be imprisoned and stay there during the appeals process.

His imprisonment is a small measure of justice for Rousseff, unfairly removed from the office she won democratically.

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Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III."

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at http://www.sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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