Investigation against former minister Milton Ribeiro stalls – 02/05/2023 – Power

Investigations by the Federal Police against Milton Ribeiro, Jair Bolsonaro’s (PL) former Minister of Education, have been paralyzed since there was suspicion of interference by the former president and former members of the corporation’s leadership in the case.

On June 22, 2022, Ribeiro was arrested by the PF based on accusations that there was a negotiation desk at the MEC (Ministry of Education) with the participation of pastors without a position in the government.

Pastors Gilmar Santos and Arilton Moura, close to Bolsonaro, were also arrested; former MEC advisor Luciano de Freitas Musse and Helder Bartolomeu, Arilton’s son-in-law.

The suspicion of interference surfaced the day after the arrest. Since then, no other diligence, such as new hearings, has been carried out within the investigations. There was also no analysis of the files and extracts obtained after breaches of telephone and bank secrecy of those investigated.

In June, Justice authorized the breaking of the bank secrecy of the former minister, his wife, Myrian Pinheiro Ribeiro, and Pastor Arilton’s daughter and son-in-law. Companies linked to the pastors and Musse also had their secrecy removed.

Ribeiro is being investigated for suspected crimes of passive corruption, prevarication, administrative law and influence peddling, in a case that has shaken Bolsonaro’s anti-corruption discourse. The former minister left the government in March 2022, a week after the Sheet reveal an audio in which he said he prioritized demands from one of the pastors at Bolsonaro’s request.

The pastors asked for money in exchange for permits for works by the MEC, according to reports confirmed by mayors. There were even reports of requesting a gold bar for a manager.

In a note, lawyer Daniel Bialski, who defends Ribeiro, said that his client had not committed any wrongdoing and that he “awaits recognition of the lack of just cause for the continuation of the investigation”.

The case involves leaders of the FNDE (National Education Development Fund) linked to centrão politicians. The MEC body, handed over to the centrão by Bolsonaro, is the one who manages the resources of federal transfers for education works —audit of the TCU (Tribunal de Contas da União) sees crimes in the performance of FNDE leaders, such as the Sheet revealed.

The investigation against Ribeiro was opened at the STF (Federal Supreme Court) in March last year due to the special jurisdiction of the then minister. With his resignation, he was sent to the first instance but, in June, he returned to the STF after mentioning Bolsonaro’s alleged interference.

Under the rapporteurship of Minister Cármen Lúcia, the case was placed in secrecy, and the investigation records are in court. Upon rising to the STF, the inquiry practically stopped moving.

The police have not yet been able, for example, to investigate the paths of money that may have reached the suspects. Nor did they advance on details of the political circuit that allowed the explosion of release of works without technical criteria in the MEC body —thousands of fractional commitments were made that represent R$ 8.8 billion for education works, a value 14 times higher than what was in the Budget.

Questioned, STF and PF did not comment. Information collected in court by the report shows that the records are in Cármen Lúcia’s office because there would be pending appeals.

Bolsonaro’s alleged interference in the case came after a message from the case’s delegate, sent to colleagues, and the disclosure of a telephone interception by Milton Ribeiro.

In a conversation on June 9, 2022 with a daughter, captured in an interception, the former minister says that he spoke with Bolsonaro that day and that the then president would have said he had a “feeling” that they would reach him through the investigation against his former assistant.

In addition to this telephone conversation, another reason for the referral was the message sent to colleagues by the federal delegate responsible for the investigation and arrest of Milton Ribeiro that there had been “interference in the conduct of the investigation”.

Chief Bruno Calandrini said in the text that the investigation was “harmed” due to the different treatment given by the police to the former minister. The episode was revealed by Sheet.

In addition to the message to colleagues, Calandrini took forward the interference complaint and indicted delegates who acted in the operation. The indictments, however, were not analyzed by Cármen Lúcia.

The policeman took to the STF two representations in which he accuses Bolsonaro’s then PF leadership of trying to shield those investigated and their relationship with the former president and his then Minister of Justice, Anderson Torres.

In the understanding of the delegate, the documents, which include reports of phone calls and emails, indicate that the PF leadership tried to change the place of imprisonment of Pastor Arilton Moura, with the aim of taking him to the headquarters of the PF superintendence in Pará.

As soon as he was arrested, Arilton threatened that he could “destroy everything” and said he was close to Bolsonaro, who had already taken açaí from Pará to the president.

The content of Calandrini’s accusations against police officers was revealed by Veja magazine last year, and confirmed by Sheet.

The delegate’s way of acting began to be contested and criticized by colleagues within the PF and internal investigations were opened to determine whether he committed irregularities. On the last 19th, a decision by the TRF-1 (Federal Regional Court of the 1st Region) determined the suspension of one of them, an investigation that investigated abuse of authority.

According to Calandrini, in Pará, the then PF superintendent in the state, Fábio Marcelo Andrade, and the then delegate for Combating Organized Crime, Ronilson dos Santos, acted to remove Arilton from the prison system and take him to the PF headquarters. .

The then Secretary of Penitentiary Administration of Pará Samuelson Igaki said, in a statement, that he received a call from the PF superintendent in that state to deal with the transfer of Arilton, to which he replied that this could only happen with a court decision. The arrests were reversed the next day and there was no time for the transfer.