RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — A Brazilian official resigned on Friday amid allegations that he enlisted President Michel Temer's help to pressure a fellow Cabinet member to approve a luxury apartment development project in a preservation zone.

The announcement was the latest fallout in a growing scandal over alleged misuse of power that has prompted opposition members of Congress to call for Temer's impeachment.

Temer, who took power in May after President Dilma Rousseff was removed from office, has been struggling to push through an ambitious reform agenda aimed and pulling Latin America's largest economy out of its worst recession in decades.

Temer's administration has lurched from one scandal to the next, but until now, none has directly implicated the president.

The latest crisis started when former Culture Minister Marcelo Calero told federal police that Temer's legislative affairs minister, Geddel Vieira Lima, pressured him to allow construction of a luxury building in a historic preservation area in the city of Salvador, 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) northwest of Rio de Janeiro. Lima had bought a unit in the planned development.

Calero, who resigned last week, testified that Temer himself suggested that he use a method to avoid the normal oversight process for such a building.

Calero said Temer invited him to the presidential palace last week to suggest "a way out," indicating that the building restrictions had created "operational difficulties" in his administration, according to Calero's testimony.

"Politics has these things, that kind of pressure," Temer said, according with Calero.

Temer's spokesman said Thursday night that the president simply intervened to arbitrate a dispute between Cabinet members.

In his resignation letter, Lima said the accusations of wrongdoing were merely "interpretations." He said he was stepping down because he and his family were suffering due to the accusations.

Lima is the sixth minister in Temer's government to resign amid allegations of corruption.

"The administration just turned six months and it already looks old," Fabio Zanini, political editor of the daily newspaper Folha de S.Paulo, wrote Friday. "The strategy to win popular legitimacy with an economic recovery and political stability is quickly sinking for a president who was not supported by the popular vote."