Pressure on Brazil's Senate President Jose Sarney to step down increased again after he was accused of hiding from the Electoral Court an ownership of a house worth 4 million reais (2.05 million U.S. dollars), local media reports said Friday.

Local daily O Estado de Sao Paulo said that Sarney bought the house in Brasilia in 1997, but did not declare it to the Electoral Court in any of the elections he participated in after that.

The senator's office said there was a mistake in the registry and the house has been included in Sarney's annual income tax declarations, which are forwarded to the Brazilian Court of Audit.

Several other allegations against the Senator already put pressure on him in the past week, including illegal appointments of his relatives to public positions and leak of hundreds of secret acts in the Senate.

Investigation on him is underway.

Several parties, including the ruling Workers' Party, had called on him to step down, but the Workers' Party withdrew its request later under pressure from President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

It is Sarney's third term as Senate's president. He presided over the Senate from 1995 to 1997, and from 2003 to 2005. He also served as Brazil's 31st president between 1985 and 1990.

Source: Xinhua