Defense says that Appio is a “cruel victim of car wash” and asks for reappointment

The defense of judge Eduardo Appio, who in May was removed from the 13th Federal Court of Curitiba, where he conducted Lava Jato cases, sent a petition to the Minister of the Federal Supreme Court (STF) Dias Toffoli this Friday (22) asking for his reappointment to the position.

The lawyers allege that the judge would be a “cruel victim of Lava Jato” and maintain that his removal would be related to the critical stance he maintained regarding the decisions of former Lava Jato magistrates, especially former judge Sergio Moro, who today occupies a seat in the Senate.

Despite this, Appio’s removal was due to an investigation investigating alleged threats to the son of the TRF-4 judge, Marcelo Malucelli. According to the judge, the federal judge called his son after a decision that reinstated the arrest of lawyer Tacla Duran, a former Odebrecht lawyer.

This week, Minister Toffoli overturned Appio’s suspicion. After the decision, the national inspector of justice, minister Luis Felipe Salomão, decided to keep the federal judge away and take over the conduct of the investigations against the judge, which until then were being processed by the Federal Regional Court of the 4th Region (TRF-4). Now, the disciplinary process against the federal judge is analyzed by the CNJ.

Although Salomão has already identified Appio’s behavior regarding the alleged threat as “very serious conduct”, the inspector has a history of decisions contrary to Lava Jato, contributing to the dismantling of the Operation.

Who is Eduardo Appio, who donated to Lula’s campaign in 2022

Appointed head of the 13th Criminal Court of Curitiba at the beginning of this year, Appio, 53 years old, has a profile that contrasts with the other judges who were in charge of the Operation Lava Jato cases in Paraná: he is against arrest in the second instance, he believes that President Lula’s arrest caused “irreparable damage” and questions what he considers “excesses” committed by the extinct task force.

The judge’s name appears on the candidacy platform and electoral accounts of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) as a donor to Lula’s electoral campaign last year. On September 25th, Appio donated R$13 – in reference to the Workers’ Party number – in the collective financing of the PT campaign.

The TSE website also contains a donation of R$40 made by the judge to the campaign of Paraná state deputy Ana Júlia Pires Ribeiro, also a member of the PT.

In May of this year, Appio also confessed that he used the acronym “LUL22” as an electronic identification in the Paraná Federal Court system, E-proc, between 2021 and the beginning of 2022. The judge confirmed that the acronym actually referred to the current president and said that it was used as an “isolated protest” against the alleged “illegal arrest” of the PT member.

Among Appio’s many controversial decisions at the head of Lava Jato is the annulment of the conviction of former governor of Rio de Janeiro Sérgio Cabral, who in 2017 had been sentenced by Moro to 14 years and two months in prison in a closed regime for the crimes of corruption and money laundering. At the time, Appio accepted the former governor’s defense request and considered the former judge, who is currently a senator, partial to judge the case. Days later, Eduardo Appio’s decision was reviewed and annulled by the TRF-4.

In a similar way, the TRF-4 annulled other decisions by Appio that served the interests of those convicted by Moro within the scope of Lava Jato. One of them was the scheduling of a hearing for former minister Antonio Palocci to point out alleged “excesses and errors” by Lava Jato. The Court also overturned Appio’s decision that returned R$35 million to the former minister.

Salomão, who took over the investigation against Appio, has a history of persecuting Lava Jato

Luis Felipe Salomão never hid his criticisms of Lava Jato and former judge Sergio Moro. According to the magistrate, Moro would be “a classic example of using the toga for political purposes”.

It is no coincidence that several of his decisions directly contributed to the dismantling of the Operation. In February of this year, Salomão decided to remove judge Marcelo Bretas, then responsible for the Lava Jato cases being processed in the 7th Federal Criminal Court of Rio de Janeiro.

Three months later, in May, the CNJ inspector ordered an inspection of courts that judge Lava Jato cases. On the 15th, the inspector released an inspection report criticizing the operation.

The following month, in June, Salomão reversed a decision and decided to unblock the social networks of judge Carlos Valois, who had been punished for publications critical of Lava Jato.

This week, at the suggestion of the magistrate, the Minister of Justice, Flávio Dino, announced the creation of a working group to investigate the financial movements of the 13th Federal Court of Curitiba within the scope of Operation Lava Jato.

The Lava Jato attacks gained even more strength after Minister Toffoli, of the STF, annulled all evidence of Odebrecht’s leniency agreement and called Lula’s arrest “one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in the country’s history”.