Judge Gabriela Hardt leaves Tony Garcia’s lawsuits – 05/06/2023 – Politics

Federal judge Gabriela Hardt, from the 13th Court of Curitiba, informed this Monday (5) that she filed a criminal complaint against businessman and former state deputy Tony Garcia for a crime against honor and that, therefore, she also decided to declare suspicion to judge all the processes in which he appears as a party.

“Since this magistrate filed a criminal complaint with the Federal Public Ministry on this date for a crime against honor that she understands was committed due to my performance as a magistrate by the defendant Antônio Celso Garcia, I declare my suspicion for supervening reasons of intimate nature (.. .) to act in all proceedings in which such person is a party,” she wrote.

The decision was signed within the criminal action in which Garcia appears as a defendant for a tax crime, and which was recently resumed by the judge, after she terminated his award-winning collaboration agreement, signed in 2004, in the wake of the Garibaldi Consortium scandal.

The termination complied with a 2018 request by the MPF (Federal Public Prosecution Service), which claimed that the businessman lied about ownership of a company, infringing a clause in the whistleblowing agreement.

When contacted, Garcia said that “at no time” did he offend the judge’s honor and that he understands the magistrate’s decision as an attempt to “get out of the spotlight” after he revealed that “she would have prevaricated”.

Last week, the whistleblower said that he was forced to illegally record people at the request of federal prosecutors and former federal judge Sergio Moro after signing a plea agreement in 2004. And the alleged illegalities, according to Garcia, were reported to the judge in 2021, but the judge would not have taken action.

They would have been narrated by Garcia during a hearing in which he tried to convince the magistrate that the rescission of his agreement was unfair.

The content of his report was sent to the STF (Federal Supreme Court) only in April of this year, by decision of Judge Eduardo Appio —removed from office since May 22 on suspicion of disciplinary infraction.

“At that hearing, I surprised even my lawyers, who didn’t know anything, and I put everything I was forced to do. I was an undercover agent [de Moro e dos procuradores],” Garcia told Sheeton Friday (2), in reference to the years following the delation agreement, between 2005 and 2006.

Garcia entered into a plea deal when he was accused of fraudulent management of the National Garibaldi Consortium and ended up arrested in 2004. He agreed to carry out an award-winning collaboration, at the end of that year, with prosecutors from the task force of the Banestado case with the 2nd Federal Court of Curitiba (current 13th Court).

In the agreement, ratified by Moro, who was in charge of the case, Garcia narrated 30 illegal situations involving politicians, lawyers, businessmen and judicial authorities. The document stated that he was “obliged to provide material proof” of his reports.

But now, Garcia maintains that he was forced to record “a lot of people” illegally and that, in practice, he served as an “undercover agent” of prosecutors and then judge Moro.

Today a senator for União Brasil, Moro said in a note that the businessman makes a “lying report and dissociated from any support in reality or in any evidence”.