President Dilma Rousseff said on Tuesday, March 22 she will not resign in Brazil's worst political crisis in two decades, calling an opposition move to impeach her a "coup d'etat" against democratic rule because she had committed no crime, Reuters reports.

A corruption scandal that has reached her inner circle threatened to implicate more people after the country's largest engineering firm Odebrecht decided to cooperate with prosecutors investigating a huge political bribery scheme. "I will never resign under any circumstances," the embattled president said in a speech to legal experts. "I have committed no crime that would warrant shortening my term."

Rousseff called on Brazil's Supreme Court to remain impartial in the crisis that has threatened to topple her government as opponents seek her impeachment in Congress, Reuters says.

Opposition parties have launched impeachment proceedings against Rousseff for allegedly manipulating government accounts to allow her government to spend more in the run-up to her 2014 re-election. The president could be suspended as soon as May if her supporters do not block impeachment in the lower house.

Recent corruption allegations and huge anti-government street protests have raised the odds of Rousseff being impeached, ending 13 years of leftist Workers' Party rule.