AUDITORS for Brazil’s senate cleared President Dilma Rousseff on Monday of personal responsibility in the key charges brought to impeach her.

The sensational auditors’ report said the Workers’ Party (PT) leader did not, as alleged, delay payments to state-run banks in breach of fiscal laws.

Ms Rousseff’s lawyer Eduardo Cardoza called the report “fatal” to the impeachment.

But despite the latest blow to Vice-President Michel Temer’s corruption-mired interim government, the impeachment proceedings will continue on lesser charges.

The report found that Ms Rousseff was “without controversy” responsible for three budget decrees releasing additional credits without the consent of congress. A fourth decree under scrutiny was found to be legal.

But with the PT arguing that the main charges were insufficient grounds for impeachment, the process looks increasingly shaky.

Ms Rousseff told Radio Guaiba the report showed there is no legal basis to impeach her.

“The auditors don’t even say I signed those three decrees deceitfully, which is required in our laws,” she said. “This impeachment is no more than an indirect election in congress.”

Ms Rousseff said she may order a referendum on Brazil’s political future if she is returned to office.

Claims that Ms Rousseff juggled government finances to increase public spending on social projects in the year before her 2014 re-election were used to justify her six-month suspension from office in May while she faces impeachment. 

But hidden motives behind the “legislative coup” by the Congress and Senate were revealed in a series of taped conversations between key figures in Mr Temer’s government and the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB) recently.

They were caught discussing how to block the “car wash” probe into massive corruption at state oil firm Petrobras that has implicated many leading members of the PMDB.

Several ministers have been forced to resign in the first six weeks of the interim government.

Brazilian newspaper Estadao quoted PMDB senator Roberto Requiao on Monday as saying that Mr Temer was offering political favours to senators to back the impeachment.

“Temer is buying the party,” he said. “It’s an explicit buying of aid.”