2017.06.2722:45:00UTC+00BRAZIL: President Says Charges Of Corruption Against Him Are "fiction"

Brazil's President Michel Temer disqualified the complaint presented against him by the chief federal prosecutor Rodrigo Janot, arguing that it lacks concrete evidence. "I was denounced for passive corruption without ever having received values. I never saw that money, and I did not participate in arrangements to commit crimes," said the president in a televised speech, surrounded by allied lawmakers and ministers. According to the charges, Temer was the final recipient of a R$ 500,000 (US$ 150,000) weekly graft payment promised by JBS - the Brazilian meatpacker which owns JBS USA - to a former presidential adviser, Rodrigo Rocha Loures, in exchange for government interference in a judicial dispute between the company and Petrobras. Evidence of those allegations includes an audio recording of an out-of-the-record late-night meeting of Temer and Joesley Batista, one of JBS's owners. During the conversation, the president points Rocha Loures as someone who would help tilt the scale in favor of JBS at the legal dispute. Police authorities also filmed the moment when Rocha Loures received the graft payment from a JBS employee, after discussing the terms of the deal. Temer used his speech to attack the integrity of the evidence against him, saying that the information was compiled by former attorney-general Marcelo Miller, who stepped down a few months before to work for JBS. According to the president, Miller has not completed a legally required quarantine to work in the private sector after leaving the prosecutor-general office. "He gained millions in a few months, which would take decades to save," he said. "They have created a novel plot. This complaint is fiction," he added.