Impeachment proceedings against Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff have begun.

Alleging that Rousseff broke the law while managing last year's budget, the speaker of Brazil’s lower house of Congress, Eduardo Cunha, has opened impeachment proceedings against the leader.

As reported in The Guardian, Rousseff was outraged by the move.

“There is no wrongful act committed by me, nor are there any suspicions that I have misused public money,” she said.

Rousseff expressed her anger and disbelief at Cunha’s decision to proceed with impeachment proceedings via a televised address to the nation.

“I’ve committed no illicit act, there is no suspicion hanging over me of any misuse of public money,” she said.

The 67-year-old leader also used the opportunity to point out that Cunha has himself been linked to millions in bribes in connection to the Petrobras kickback scheme.

“I don’t have any offshore bank accounts. I have no hidden assets,” Rousseff added.

The Petrobras corruption scandal, which implicated numerous government officials, has cost the state-run oil company over $16 billion. President Rousseff, who was in charge of Petrobras during the period when most of the corruption was supposed to have occurred, has been cleared of any involvement.

Two-thirds of the lower house need to approve the impeachment process in order for it to proceed. As the governing coalition has a majority in the lower house of Congress, Rousseff is confident that the impeachment motion will be shot down.

The BBC reports that Cunha expressed trepidation before initiating the impeachment process.

"It was a difficult decision,” he said. “I did not become speaker of the Chamber of Deputies aiming to approve impeachment proceedings against the president."