MATHEUS TEIXEIRA
BRASILIA, DF (FOLHAPRESS)
Minister Dias Toffoli’s decision to declare Odebrecht’s evidence against politicians affected by Lava Jato useless and to order the criminal investigation of prosecutors who signed the leniency agreement with the contractor consolidates the offensive of a wing of the Judiciary, the PGR (Attorney’s Office – General of the Republic) and the Lula government (PT) against members of the operation.
The PT Executive treats the history of Lava Jato as a setup to overthrow the party in power. On the one hand, the speech focuses on abuses committed by the operation but, on the other, it minimizes confessed crimes and recovered billions of dollars.
In addition to Toffoli’s decision, several other measures were taken to weaken the investigations. Most of them refer to facts that have been public knowledge for a long time, but which only now, during the Lula government, have aroused interest in being punished by authorities.
The assessment of members of higher courts is that the climate against Lava Jato makes it easier to repair abuses committed by the operation. They also point out that the anti-Lava Jato decisions serve to make gestures to Lula, responsible for appointing vacant positions in the most important courts in the country.
The operation was already undergoing a process of emptying since Sergio Moro’s departure from the judiciary to take over the Ministry of Justice under the government of Jair Bolsonaro (PL). This was expanded with the rise of Augusto Aras to the post of Attorney General of the Republic and the end of Bolsonaro’s support for the operation, after he took office as president.
Now, the movement has gained even more strength and targets the agents who were responsible for the investigations.
Not even the privileged forum granted to parliamentarians has been enough to shield members of the operation. The former head of the Lava Jato task force at the MPF (Federal Public Ministry), Deltan Dallagnol, had his mandate as federal deputy revoked by the TSE (Superior Electoral Court) based on the law that vetoes prosecutors with administrative processes pending to contest elections .
Lula, in turn, publicly recalled, already as president, that during his imprisonment he used to say that he would only “get better when he fucks Moro”.
The government took advantage of Toffoli’s decision to reinforce the offensive against car wash operators.
On the same day as Toffoli’s court order, the AGU (Attorney General’s Office) created a task force to verify whether irregularities were committed in the operation; the Minister of Justice, Flávio Dino (PSB), promised to ask the Federal Police to investigate Odebrecht’s leniency agreement; and the CGU (Comptroller General of the Union) stated that it was already analyzing the magistrate’s decision even before being notified about the court order.
Dino is one of those responsible for weakening the operation within the PF, which for years was one of the pillars of Lava Jato. This became clear at the beginning of September, during the graduation ceremony for the corporation’s new employees.
“I want to assure you, President Lula, that this Federal Police today, all of it, is at the service of a single cause, which is your cause, the cause of Brazil. We abolish satanic temptations, spectacularizations, abuses, illegal task forces. All of this is in the past. Today we have a police force dedicated to serving the population”, declared Dino, at the time.
In his decision, Toffoli also ordered the CNJ (National Council of Justice), the CNMP (National Council of the Public Ministry), the TCU (Federal Audit Court) and the PGR to investigate Lava Jato’s role in the leniency agreement with Odebrecht .
Part of these bodies, in fact, had already started an offensive against the operation.
The CNJ Internal Affairs Department, for example, announced in May the carrying out of an extraordinary correction in the 13th Court of Curitiba, where Lava Jato began, and in the 8th Panel of the TRF-4 (Federal Regional Court of the 4th Region), responsible in second instance for the investigations.
This week, it released a report in which it stated that it had found “chaotic management” and “possible collusion” in the control of amounts arising from plea bargain and leniency agreements signed with the operation’s task force in Curitiba and approved by the court that was under Moro’s responsibility.
Before that, the CNJ had imposed a setback on another important member of Lava Jato. In February, the council opened disciplinary proceedings and removed judge Marcelo Bretas, responsible for the operation in Rio de Janeiro, from his position.
At the time, three complaints against Bretas were analyzed. One of them was from the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, Eduardo Paes (PSD), who accused him of having intentionally harmed him in the elections for governor in 2018, due to the disclosure of a plea bargain that affected the politician.
The case was only analyzed this year. Two other cases also led to Bretas’ dismissal, in a confidential trial in February.
This is a representation by the OAB (Brazilian Bar Association) based on complaints from a lawyer against the dismissed judge, and another process by the CNJ Internal Affairs Division initiated after an inspection pointed out “serious deficiencies” in the 7th Federal Criminal Court of Rio of January.
The STJ (Superior Court of Justice), which in the past supported Lava Jato decisions, including Lula’s conviction, also began to impose defeats on the operation in recent months.
The court, for example, ordered Deltan to pay R$75,000 in compensation to Lula due to the press conference in which he exposed a PowerPoint against the PT member to explain the complaint filed against the PT leader in 2016.
Like Deltan, Moro, who was the main judge of the operation, has his parliamentary mandate threatened. He is a defendant in an electoral investigation action on suspicion of abuse of economic power in the 2022 pre-campaign. He is currently seeking to build bridges with the Judiciary to maintain his mandate.
The day after Deltan’s impeachment, Moro met with the president of the TSE, Alexandre de Moraes.
Moro also attended hearings with STF ministers Rosa Weber, Luís Roberto Barroso and Luiz Fux.
In gestures considered as nods to ministers, Moro did not sign Barroso’s impeachment request and criticized the hostility towards Moraes at Rome’s international airport. He also wanted to make it clear that he was not against Lula’s nomination of Cristiano Zanin to the Supreme Court — his opponent during the Lava Jato era — for personal reasons.
The post Decision on Odebrecht consolidates offensive by Lula, STF and PGR against Lava Jato appeared first in Jornal de Brasília.
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