THE architect of the coup against former Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff has been handed a 24-year jail sentence for corruption after embezzling cash from the Federal Savings Bank.

Eduardo Cunha has already received a 15-year sentence for tax evasion and money laundering charges related to the Car Wash corruption scandal.

He was sentenced alongside former legislator Henrique Eduardo Alves as part of Operation Sepsis, with Judge Vallisney de Souza Oliveira ordering Mr Cunha to pay back £1.4 million to the state.

Mr Cunha was implicated in Operation Car Wash, with prosecutors seeking a potential 184-year jail term for taking “as much as £30m in bribes for himself and his allies, plundering Petrobras, the government-controlled oil company, while laundering money through an evangelical megachurch."

It was during this period that Mr Cunha led the charge for the impeachment of Ms Rousseff that paved the way for Michel Temer’s right-wing coup administration.

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the former president and Brazil’s most popular politician,  remains comfortably ahead in the polls for October’s presidential elections despite being in jail on a trumped-up graft conviction.