“The charge is a fiction,” Temer said in his first public reaction since the country’s top prosecutor late Monday filed the corruption charge with the Supreme Court. MARCOS CORREA / BRAZILIAN PRESIDENCY / AFP
Brazil’s President Michel Temer rejected a bribery charge against him Tuesday, saying there was no proof.
“The charge is a fiction,” Temer said in his first public reaction since the country’s top prosecutor late Monday filed the corruption charge with the Supreme Court.
“Where are the concrete proofs of my receiving this money?” he asked during a nationally televised statement at the presidential palace in Brasilia.
Temer attacked Janot, saying he had mounted a baseless case that was an assault on his “dignity.”
“I will not allow myself to be accused of crimes that I did not commit. My intention is to work for Brazil. I will not shirk the battles,” he said.
Temer, the first sitting president of Brazil to face criminal charges, is accused of accepting bribes from a giant meatpacking company.
He is also under investigation for obstruction of justice and belonging to a criminal organization.
If the lower house of Congress votes by a two-thirds majority to accept the charge, the center-right president would be suspended for 180 days and face trial in the Supreme Court.
However, Temer’s aides say they are confident he has sufficient support in the scandal-plagued Congress — where dozens of lawmakers have been caught up in the same sweeping graft probe — to get the charge thrown out.
