Judge of the TRF-4 grants habeas corpus to the money changer Youssef

The money changer Alberto Youssef, one of the whistleblowers of Operation Lava Jato, who was arrested at the headquarters of the Federal Police, in Curitiba, in less than 24 hours obtained a habeas corpus to leave the prison. The decision was taken at 5 pm this Tuesday (21) by Judge Marcelo Malucelli, from the Federal Regional Court of the 4th Region (TRF-4), headquartered in Porto Alegre (RS). The magistrate recognized the illegality of the arrest, as it was decreed without a request from the Federal Public Ministry (MPF).

Until 6:30 pm, the Federal Court did not say whether the money changer had already left the Federal Police detention facility or was still being held.

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The determination of the release came a few hours after the Lava Jato judge, Eduardo Fernando Appio, from the 13th Federal Court in Curitiba, had again decreed the preventive detention, after the custody hearing with the investigated. Appio’s decision was handed down at 3:39 pm. A first preventive detention had been decreed by Appio this Monday (20), when Youssef was arrested in Santa Catarina and taken to Curitiba (PR).

Due to the new information added to the case by Youssef’s defense (address and telephone updated), the judge of Operation Lava Jato, shortly after the custody hearing, ordered the withdrawal of the preventive arrest warrant from the previous day and the issuance of a new one. for the maintenance of Alberto Youssef arrested at the Federal Police, in Curitiba.

Appio argued that documents added to the file by the Federal Police “show that there are very serious indications that Alberto Youssef has withheld from the judicial and fiscal authorities the true possession and ownership of the buildings built in the municipality of Itapoá (SC)”.

For Appio, the evidence indicates that the investigated may be involved in “new criminal practices, especially crimes against the tax order, as well as evading the existence of assets belonging to the judicial authorities that accompany the criminal execution”.

The judge who determined the release, however, reported that “Law 13.964/2019 gave new wording to art. 282, § 2, of the Code of Criminal Procedure, prescribing that “precautionary measures will be decreed by the judge at the request of the parties or, when in the course of the criminal investigation, by representation of the police authority or upon request of the Public Prosecutor’s Office” and, also to the art. 311 of the Code of Criminal Procedure establishing that “pretrial detention decreed by the judge, at the request of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the plaintiff or the assistant, or by representation of the police authority, shall fit”. And he justifies: “In this context, the decree is illegal pre-trial detention.

On Monday, Alberto Youssef’s lawyer, Luís Gustavo Flores, told the Look that Appio’s decision “completely ignored the terms of the Agreement ratified by the STF” and also mentioned the “existence of criminal enforcement records, where all the questions raised by the magistrate were debated and clarified”.