Brasil: No Quarter

BRAZIL No Quarter Former Brazilian President Michel Temer was arrested Thursday morning in connection with corruption investigations that began while he was still in office. Temer, 78, took over as interim president after the impeachment of former President Dilma Rousseff and held office from 2016 to 2018. Temer’s former Mining and Energy Minister Moreira Franco was also arrested, the BBC reported. Temer has consistently denied any wrongdoing, but his arrest was widely expected once he lost the legal protections provided to serving elected officials in Brazil. The televised perp walk came nearly a year after the country was obsessed with the trial of former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who was sentenced to 12 years in prison for corruption and money laundering, the New York Times noted. Temer was the subject of at least 10 corruption probes in recent years, some of them associated with the notorious Operation Car Wash investigation involving the state oil company Petrobras. The flurry of accusations made him Brazil’s most unpopular leader in recent history and helped fuel the campaign of current President Jair Bolsonaro.