Brazil’s embattled interim president, Michel Temer, has suffered a fresh blow after the prosecutor general requested the arrest of four of the most powerful members of his party for trying to obstruct the Lava Jato (Car Wash) investigation into corruption at the state oil company Petrobras.

Following two ministerial resignations, Temer’s centre-right administration – which took power less than a month ago – now looks more vulnerable to the graft investigation than that of his predecessor, Dilma Rousseff, who is in the midst of an impeachment trial in the senate on unrelated charges.



Arguably the most influential of those targeted is Eduardo Cunha, who has already been suspended as speaker of congress for interfering with the investigation. He is accused of receiving millions of dollars worth of kickbacks from overinflated contracts and stashing the cash in secret Swiss bank accounts.



Cunha – a leading member of the evangelical caucus in the lower house – was the architect of Rousseff’s impeachment, which he initiated after her Workers’ party refused to protect him from related charges in the ethics committee of the lower house.



He is a member of Temer’s Brazil Democratic Movement party (PMDB), as are the other three figures whose arrest has been sought: senate chief Renan Calheiros, former president José Sarney and the party’s leader in the upper house, Romero Jucá. In recent weeks, all three have been implicated by recordings suggesting they were trying to block the Lava Jato operation.



All deny the charges against them by the country’s top prosecutor Rodrigo Janot. In a statement, Calheiros said that the reported arrest request was “unreasonable, disproportionate and abusive”.

The supreme court must now decide whether the politicians can be arrested.



The threat to these dominant figures in the upper and lower houses adds to the headaches of the president, who is trying to push a package of spending cuts through parliament and other measures to lift Brazil out of its worst recession in decades. Inflation is in double digits and unemployment has hit a record high of 11.4 million workers.



Risks remain for other politicians in the government and opposition because the Lava Jato investigation has yet to run its course. Among those threatened are half a dozen cabinet ministers, as well as former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and defeated presidential candidate Aecio Neves.



Temer has not been charged, but he has been been named as an influential figure in Petrobras affairs in the plea testimonies of at least two of those involved in the scandal.

