Brazil police search lower house speaker's home, GloboNews says

15/12/2015 - 10:45

RIO DE JANEIRO/SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Brazil's federal police conducted a search and seizure operation at the homes of Lower House Speaker Eduardo Cunha in Brasilia and in Rio de Janeiro early on Tuesday , news channel GloboNews said.

GloboNews showed images of Cunha's home in Brasilia, the nation's capital, surrounded by several police vans. According to the TV channel, federal police are also searching for evidence at the homes of former mining and energy minister Edison Lobão, as well as in the house of lower house lawmaker Anibal Gomes.

Cunha, a lawmaker from the Democratic Movement Party, the ruling coalition's largest, was charged by prosecutors in August with corruption and money laundering, becoming the first sitting politician to be charged as part of "Operation Car Wash," the country's biggest corruption scandal ever.

The lawyers for Cunha, Gomes and Lobão could not be contacted immediately for comment. Calls to the federal police in Brasilia were not immediately answered.

(Reporting by Pedro Fonseca and Alexandre Caverni; Writing by Guillermo Parra-Bernal and Silvio Cascione Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)