CASE AGAINST BRAZIL PRESIDENT DILMA ROUSSEFF:
- Accusations she broke fiscal laws in 2015 to hide budget problems
- main allegation is her administration delayed moving treasury funds to state-owned banks to pay for government programs, making public finances look better than they were
- she insists its not an impeachable offence, pointing to other Brazilian presidents who used such creative accounting techniques and were not punished
- fact-checking website Aos Fatos looked at such incidents involving state-run bank Caixa Economica Federal
- says Rousseff used creative accounting during her first five years in office 35 times more than combined total of two previous presidents, Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva
- allegations include funds for all federal programs and state-run banks BNDES and Banco do Brasil
- case against her cites only irregular accounting done in 2015, the first year of her second term, because Brazil's constitution says a president can be impeached only for wrongful acts in the current term
- In 2011-2015, Rousseff's administration used creative accounting in delaying payments to Caixa totalling almost $US10 billion
- funds paid back, but Brazil's fiscal laws say state banks should not make loans to the federal government
- Rousseff denies those were loans - funds involved unemployment benefits, bonuses to public workers and Bolsa Familia benefits, which is the government's flagship social program to provide minimum incomes for the poorest
- the delays stopped after a government watchdog ruled in October 2015 the creative accounting mechanisms used by Rousseff were irregular
- Vice President Michel Temer, next in line to take over from Rousseff, authorised creative accounting measures when she was overseas
- Temer argues he's not responsible for economic policies and says his signature doesn't mean any involvement in the decision to delay payments
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