MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Rousseff signed budget decrees without congressional approval, claim Senate experts

Rousseff is charged with using cosmetics accounting to mask a ballooning budget deficit, allegations that she denies.

A nonpartisan team from the Brazilian Senate budget analysts on Monday handed potential legal ammunition both to opponents and supporters of suspended President Dilma Rousseff as she tries to survive n impeachment trial.

 Rousseff is charged with using cosmetics accounting to mask a ballooning budget deficit, allegations that she denies. Those accusations set in motion an impeachment process that has shaken up Brazil's political system and culminated in the mid-May start of a Senate trial that has suspended and could permanently remove Rousseff from office.

In its 224-page report, the three-member group, comprised of career Senate budget technicians, concluded that the populist leader had signed three budget decrees shifting around 2.3 billion Reais (US$683 million) without procuring the needed approval of Brazil’s Congress.

The analysts also said that the president’s administration then took too long to transfer repayment funds to a state bank, a lapse that congressional opponents say breached the country’s fiscal rules and justifies her removal from office.

The group concluded that delays by the National Treasury in transferring funds to state bank Banco do Brasil to cover for subsidies paid to farmers on behalf of the administration, amounted to loans from the bank to the administration. That is unlawful under the country’s fiscal regulations, as the president’s adversaries have contended.

But the group also said Ms. Rousseff wasn’t personally to blame for the fund-transfer delay. “There was not any identified act by the president that would have contributed directly or indirectly to the delays,” the report said.

The group also found no fault with a fourth presidential budget decree that had been questioned by her accusers because it didn’t impact fiscal targets and therefore wasn’t illegal, the report said.

The conclusions likely will be seized on by Rousseff’s defense team, which had demanded the technical report and is attempting to build a case that the president committed no wrongdoing.

Still, it is unclear how the report will impact the Senate trial. Early tallies by local media indicate that a majority of Brazil’s 81 senators will vote against Ms. Rousseff, but as of now their numbers aren’t high enough to secure her impeachment. A minimum of 54 votes is needed for impeachment.

“The lawmakers already have made up their minds,” said André Cesar, a political consultant in Brasília. “Those who are against Rousseff will keep their positions,” he said.

However, he said, the report will lend credibility to the impeachment process, which Ms. Rousseff has tried to dismiss as a politically motivated coup d’état.

The report was presented Monday to the 21 senators who make up a special committee that is conducting the first phase of the impeachment trial. The committee is listening to witnesses and gathering evidence, and then will produce a report advising senators to convict or acquit Ms. Rousseff.