Former adviser to Brazilian president is arrested in corruption scandal

SAO PAULO, Brazil – A former Brazilian congressman and adviser to President Michel Temer was arrested Saturday in a new threat to the embattled president, who’s under investigation and facing possible impeachment in a corruption scandal.

Rodrigo Rocha Loures was arrested on orders of Supreme Court Justice Edson Fachin, according to a statement from Brazil’s Federal Police. Loures is being investigated after being captured on video allegedly receiving a suitcase containing $154,000 from a businessman.

Cezar Roberto Bitencourt, Loures’ lawyer, and Temer’s spokesman didn’t return phone calls and emails seeking comment.

Two weeks earlier, the newspaper O Globo reported that Joesley Batista, former chairman of the meat-processing giant JBS, had secretly recorded Temer endorsing the payment of hush money to Eduardo Cunha, the jailed former lower-house speaker instrumental in the impeachment of Temer’s predecessor, Dilma Rousseff.

As part of a plea bargain arrangement, JBS’s owners accused Loures of receiving kickbacks.

The corruption investigation has implicated many of the country’s business and political elite and helped bring down Rousseff. The Supreme Court has authorized an investigation into Temer on accusations of passive corruption and obstruction of justice.

Temer has repeatedly denied all accusations of wrongdoing, said he won’t resign.

Loures had immunity from being arrested as a member of the Chamber of Deputies, but lost his seat and that protection when Osmar Serraglio was ousted as Justice Minister and resumed his legislative term, displacing Loures, who had been Serraglio’s deputy.