Former Lava Jato authorities are targets of investigations – 03/18/2024 – Power

Ten years after the beginning of Operation Lava Jato, the actions of the prosecutors in the case and the judges are the target of a series of questions in different spheres of public administration, in disputes with still unpredictable developments.

While supporters of the operation talk about revenge against those who acted against corruption, critics of the methods used in investigations years ago cite the need to punish irregular conduct and prevent abuses from recurring.

One of the exponents of this last group is the minister of the STF (Supreme Federal Court) Gilmar Mendes, who defends the creation of a “truth commission” in relation to Lava Jato, in reference to the collegiate body that investigated the crimes of the military regime.

In a court session on the 27th, Gilmar read a series of messages exchanged by prosecutors, seized in Operation Spoofing, and criticized what he considers to be the inaction of the Public Prosecutor’s Office in investigating illegalities.

“It is essential that these facts are told to future generations,” he said.

Private messages from Lava Jato authorities intercepted by a hacker and obtained in 2019 by the website The Intercept Brasil exposed voluntarism and controversial attitudes, highlighting collaboration between the judge and investigators, which is illegal.

More recently, the dialogues were used to review the use of evidence provided by the construction company Odebrecht, which has now benefited from the suspension of payment of the fine provided for in the commitment.

In messages exchanged on the subject, prosecutors comment that the construction company’s files were handled in supermarket bags, without care for their preservation.

To this day, when asked about the content of the messages, former judge Sergio Moro and former prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol usually declare that it is not possible to prove their veracity. At the same time, they repeat that they saw nothing illegal in the conversations.

Moro left the judiciary in 2018 to become Minister of Justice in the Jair Bolsonaro government and is now a senator for União Brasil-PR. Deltan asked for his resignation in 2021, was elected federal deputy for Paraná, but was revoked by the Electoral Court last year in alleged violation of the Clean Record Law.

The so-called Vaza Jato and what unfolded from it within the Judiciary —Operation Spoofing— gave strength to the theses about missteps in the investigation and ended up driving the sequence of annulments of processes and evidence. The messages, for example, were read in the STF trial in 2021 that invalidated Moro’s decisions against Lula.

However, in theory, they cannot now be used as an accusation, but only to benefit the defenses of those who were accused.

Vaza Jato also revealed details of other smaller but rumored episodes, such as the billboard paid for by one of its members, prosecutor Diogo Castor de Mattos, when Lava Jato completed five years, in March 2019. The advertisement, shown in an avenue close to Curitiba airport, was a kind of advertisement for the operation itself.

The billboard that Mattos later admitted to having secretly created featured the image of prosecutors accompanied by the words: “Welcome to the Republic of Curitiba – land of Operation Lava Jato – the investigation that changed the country”.

In 2021, the National Council of the Public Ministry understood that he committed an act of improbity, which imposes a penalty of dismissal.

Former Attorney General Augusto Aras delegated to a member of the Federal Public Ministry the task of filing a public civil action for loss of office against Castor de Mattos, which occurred in 2022. But, in November 2023, the Federal Court in Paraná he rejected the dismissal and kept Castor de Mattos on the institution’s staff.

Now out of the judiciary, Sergio Moro will face a trial in April at the TRE (Paraná Regional Electoral Court) that could revoke his mandate in Congress.

Another headache for the former judge is the extraordinary correction opened by the CNJ (National Council of Justice) Internal Affairs in May last year to carry out a kind of sweep in the offices of the 13th Federal Court of Curitiba and the 8th Panel of the TRF- 4 (Federal Regional Court of the 4th Region), the collegiate responsible for analyzing Lava Jato’s appeals in the second instance.

Last September, a partial inspection report pointed to “chaotic management” in the control of amounts arising from collaboration agreements signed at Lava Jato. The work has not yet been completed, but the partial report has already led to the filing of a disciplinary complaint against Moro, by order of the national inspector, Luis Felipe Salomão.

The magistrate sees signs of violation of duties “of due diligence” in decisions that authorized the transfer of more than R$2 billion to Petrobras” from 2015 to 2019.

After the release of the report, Moro said he repudiated the claim that there had been “chaotic management” and stated that he followed the standard of agreements approved by the Supreme Court.

Former prosecutor Deltan also criticized the inspector’s statements and called the case an “example of revisionism”. For him, “a revenge that seeks to rewrite history” is underway.

Another case pending at the CNJ involving Lava Jato targets federal judge Marcelo Bretas, who led the Rio de Janeiro arm of the operation. In 2023, he was temporarily removed from his post by the CNJ, among other reasons for alleged political activity in the 2018 election, and the case has not yet been defined.

The questions against Lava Jato also include an offensive by federal agencies, triggered after a decision by STF minister Dias Toffoli that invalidated the use of Odebrecht evidence, last September.

That decision ordered an investigation into the procedures adopted in drafting the agreement. Subsequently, the AGU (Attorney General of the Union) created a task force to verify whether irregularities were committed in the operation; the then Minister of Justice, Flávio Dino, promised to ask the Federal Police to investigate the Odebrecht agreement; and the Comptroller General of the Union stated that it was already analyzing the magistrate’s decision even before being notified of the court order.

Lava Jato whistleblowers have used the various challenges to the operation in attempts to review the commitments that were made years ago.

The defense of Alberto Youssef, one of the pivots of Lava Jato, has already signaled that it intends to review the money changer’s collaboration agreement based on details from an investigation into environmental bugs found in the cell where he was imprisoned in 2014. The lawyers want to know if this affected the “voluntariness and spontaneity” of his denunciation.

Youssef’s defense steps to break his agreement are closely monitored by lawyers for other defendants. This is because the money changer’s accusation is considered a backbone of Lava Jato and a possible breach could have an impact on the entire investigation.