Brazil's Senate president denies plan to protect senators from jail

Brazil's Senate President Renan Calheiros from the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), denied on Thursday that there was a deal in the Senate to protect senators from facing jail.

"This deal does not exist, and will not exist, because the Senate will always practice the separation of powers...Whoever is saying this is seeking once again to ... complicate the facts," said Calheiros at a press conference.

He added that he wanted "the facts to be fully cleared up" and said he was at the disposal of judicial authorities to cooperate with their investigations.

On Tuesday, Brazil's Prosecutor General Rodrigo Janot asked the Supreme Court (STF) for the arrest and imprisonment of leaders of interim President Michel Temer's PMDB.

Janot called for the arrest of Calheiros, former azilian President Jose Sarney (1985-1990), the suspended president of the Chamber of Deputies, Eduardo Cunha, and PMDB President Romero Juca.

On Thursday, the Estado de Sao Paulo daily suggested that lawmakers had struck a deal to stop Calheiros and Juca, two key actors in the impeachment of suspended President Dilma Rousseff, from being jailed.

The petitions are now being analyzed by Justice Teori Zavascki, the STF's rapporteur on Operation Car Wash (Lava Jato), the investigation into the Petrobras corruption ring.

Janot's decision to call for these arrests came after conversations were recorded by Sergio Machado, former president of state-owned Transpetro, in which the PMDB leaders involved can be heard discussing how to stop the Car Wash investigation.

In his declarations to the judicial authorities, Machado admitted having paid 70 million reais (20 million U.S. dollars) to the PMDB leadership. Endit