Brazil swears in a new president just hours after impeaching Dilma Rousseff over financial corruption

Brazil has sworn in its new president after the Senate voted to permanently remove  Dilma Rousseff from office.

The conservative former Vice President Michel Temer, who has run the country since her suspension in May, was sworn to serve out the remainder of her term through 2018.

Rousseff - the country's first female president - was accused of illegally using money from state banks to boost public spending in order to patch budget holes in 2014, masking the country's problems as it slid into its deepest recession in decades.

On Wednesday, the Senate voted to convict her by 61 votes to 20. However, she has not been barred from holding public office.

A separate vote will be held on whether Rousseff will be barred from public office for eight years.

However, Rousseff - who was jailed and tortured in the 1970s during the country's dictatorship, during which she was a Marxist guerrilla - has not taken the verdict lying down.

In a tweet, she accused the Senate of ignoring the will of the people.

'Today is the day that 61 men, many of them charged and corrupt, threw 54million Brazilian votes in the garbage,' she wrote.

Rousseff won re-election in 2014 with more than 54million votes.

Brazil's Supreme Court Chief Justice Ricardo Lewandowski begins the final session in the impeachment trial of Brazil's suspended President Dilma Rousseff in Senate chambers

She had earlier confronted her accusers, telling the Senate that she was innocent and warning that the Brazilian democracy is in danger. 

'Twice I have seen the face of death close up,' she said. 'When I was tortured for days on end, subjected to abuses that make us doubt humanity and the meaning of life itself, and when a serious and extremely painful illness could have cut short my life,' she said.

'Today I fear only for the death of democracy, for which many of us here in this chamber fought.'

The impeachment process that has polarized the Latin American country and paralysed its politics for nine months. 

Mr Termer is expected to address the nation later today.