Lava Jato 10 years; see characters, controversies and episodes – 03/02/2024 – Power

Ten years after the launch of its first phase, Operation Lava Jato remains in the country’s political debate, with developments still underway in the Judiciary and discussions about measures taken at the height of the investigations.

In Curitiba alone, 81 phases were launched until 2021, the year in which the task force of prosecutors in the operation was closed. The investigations targeted politicians, financial operators, former executives of state-owned companies and businesspeople and generated a series of collaboration agreements and return of resources.

Remember characters, episodes and controversies of Lava Jato since the first stage, on March 17, 2014.

5 targets

Lula (PT)
The country’s main political leader, the current president was a defendant in four cases in Paraná and spent 580 days in prison in Curitiba after the ruling in the triple case, but ended up winning the 2022 election

Eduardo Cunha (ex-MDB)
Lava Jato was crucial in removing him from the presidency of the Chamber, in 2016, amid the revelation that he had an account abroad. He spent three and a half years in prison in Paraná

Michel Temer (MDB)
The emedebista was arrested in 2019 in action by the Rio de Janeiro task force two months after leaving the Presidency. He ended up detained for a few days and subsequently achieved a string of legal victories

Fernando Collor
The former president was convicted by the STF in 2023 in an action derived from the operation on payments by the construction company UTC and is awaiting appeals in freedom

Sérgio Cabral (ex-MDB)
The former governor was the main defendant in the Rio de Janeiro arm of the operation. He was imprisoned for six years and sentenced to hundreds of years in prison. Still dirty, he says today that he wants to run again

5 authorities

Sergio Moro
Head of the Federal Court of Curitiba responsible for the operation, he became the main symbol of Lava Jato. He was Jair Bolsonaro’s Minister of Justice and is now a senator for the Brazil-PR Union, threatened with impeachment in the Electoral Court

Deltan Dallagnol
He was head of the Public Ministry’s task force in the operation and became the best-known face of the prosecutors. In 2016, she produced a controversial PowerPoint about suspicions against Lula, for which she was sued for compensation for moral damages. Elected federal deputy in 2022, he was revoked in the Electoral Court for alleged violation of the Clean Record Law

Zavascki theory
The STF minister was the first rapporteur of the operation and adopted a position generally favorable to the Curitiba decisions. Died in a plane crash in 2017

Marcelo Bretas
Judge responsible for the Lava Jato branch in Rio de Janeiro, was involved in clashes in hearings with former governor Cabral. He is removed from his post by decision of the National Council of Justice

Newton Ishii
Known as the Federal Japanese, he was a PF agent in Paraná and became known for escorting prisoners from the operation in the numerous phases that began in 2014.

5 phases

The first
On March 17, 2014, the PF took to the streets against a network of money changers following an order from the then unknown judge Sergio Moro. The main target was Alberto Youssef, who had already been arrested in the Banestado scandal in the 2000s.

Final Judgment
In November 2014, Lava Jato changed its level by arresting heads of large construction companies, such as OAS, Camargo Corrêa and UTC

Erga Omnes
In June 2015, the PF arrested Marcelo Odebrecht, who was president of the country’s main construction company, as well as heads of Andrade Gutierrez, expanding the scope of its actions

Pixuleco
In August 2015, José Dirceu, Lula’s former right-hand man and suspected of receiving bribes in public contracts, was arrested. The name of the phase referred to an alleged bribery nickname

Aletheia
In March 2016, Lula was taken to testify and was searched, igniting the political climate in the country, on the eve of Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment.

5 whistleblowers

Paulo Roberto Costa
Arrested, the former Petrobras director was the first Lava Jato whistleblower, in 2014. His agreement precipitated a series of other allegations and investigations. Costa died in 2022

Delcídio do Amaral
The first senator to be arrested while in office, he signed a collaboration agreement months later, in 2016. The accusation caused an uproar in Brasília in 2016, worsening the crisis at the end of Dilma’s government

Sergio Machado
In 2016, the former PSDB senator and former president of the state-owned company Transpetro recorded politicians, such as former president José Sarney and then senator Romero Jucá, who said that it was necessary to “stop the bleeding” of the operation

Marcelo Odebrecht
The arrest of the main businessman targeted by Lava Jato ended up leading the business group to close the operation’s main collaboration agreement, signed in 2016 with authorities from the United States and Switzerland

Antonio Palocci
The former minister said in testimony that Lula had made a ‘blood pact’ with the construction company Odebrecht. Subsequently, his denunciation generated few concrete developments in the Judiciary.

5 controversies

Staples in the cell
Investigation showed that the cell where Alberto Youssef was kept at the PF headquarters in Paraná had illegal wiretaps. The money changer’s defense today cites the episode in an attempt to review the collaboration agreement that was signed almost ten years ago

Dilma audios
In March 2016, Moro declassified intercepted phone calls between the then president and Lula, inflaming street protests and the pro-impeachment scenario.

Laughter with Aécio
In 2016, Moro was photographed by Sheet at an event socializing with tucano Aécio Neves, PT’s main opponent at the time

Money for foundation
In 2019, an attempt to create a private foundation with resources from compensation negotiated by Petrobras in the United States was blocked by the STF. In the prosecutors’ plan, this entity would manage a fund with half of the R$2.5 billion paid

Palocci’s plea bargain
Moro removed the confidentiality of the former minister’s statements with accusations against the PT with less than a week to go before the 2018 presidential election

5 discoveries

Millionaire assets of former Petrobras executives
Among other cases, whistleblower and former manager Pedro Barusco committed to returning US$97 million in 2014. In international cooperation agreements, data from former directors of the state-owned company were also sent to Brazil, and the resources were blocked

Place frequented by Lula
The investigation in 2015 reached a rural property that was frequented by the PT member in Atibaia (SP). In 2016, a report from Sheet showed that improvements had been paid by Odebrecht

Odebrecht’s lists
The contractor’s executives kept a list of hundreds of payments, assigning nicknames to politicians in their slush funds and official donations accounts.

Eduardo Cunha’s money in Switzerland
In 2015, cooperation with the European country revealed that the then president of the Chamber of Deputies kept US$2.4 million in a bank that he had not declared in Brazil

Queiroz’s movement
It was as a result of Lava Jato in Rio de Janeiro that the investigation into a “rachadinha” in the former office of now senator Flávio Bolsonaro (PL-RJ) in the Rio Assembly came to light. The investigation involving former advisor Fabrício Queiroz was one of the main pain points head of the Bolsonaro government

5 methods

Preventive arrests
In Curitiba alone, at least 132 preventive arrest warrants were issued (without a deadline and before trial). Detentions that lasted for months and were kept in higher courts ended up leading the accused to see collaboration agreements as the only way out of jail.

Sequence of denunciations
The plea bargain agreements were one of the pillars of Lava Jato, without which the investigations would not have reached this far. The revelations brought by whistleblowers ended up encouraging other suspects involved to also collaborate, creating a domino effect

Focus on communication
The operation’s prosecutors were clearly concerned about obtaining public support for the continuation of the investigations. Collective interviews and detailing the findings through publicity of the processes helped with this goal

Concentration of cases
The Lava Jato processes and investigations were initially handled exclusively by the then judge Moro, on the grounds that the cases were interconnected. Gradually, higher courts reviewed this practice, criticized by defenses and dubbed the “universal judgment of Curitiba”

Coercive conduct
The practice of taking suspects to testify in a mandatory manner was used hundreds of times in the operation, including against Lula, in 2016, until the STF declared this type of action illegal, if the target had not been summoned to be heard previously.

5 phases of collapse

Moro’s departure
In 2018, Moro’s initiative to leave the judiciary to become Jair Bolsonaro’s minister compromised the credibility of the operation and even became a reason for the annulment of his decisions in 2021

Submission of cases to the Electoral Court
In March 2019, the STF decided that Lava Jato cases related to the campaign fund should be processed in the Electoral Court, not in the Federal Court. The measure resulted in the annulment of a series of sentences that had already been issued.

Vaca Jato
In June 2019, the website The Intercept Brasil began publishing dialogues between prosecutors and Moro on the Telegram application. The conversations showed proximity between judge and prosecution and led to the reversal of old decisions in the Judiciary

Lula’s release
Lula left prison in November 2019, after the STF began to bar the arrest of convicts who had appeals pending in the Judiciary. The new understanding was one of the main setbacks of the operation

End of task forces
In February 2021, the Attorney General’s Office closed the task forces created exclusively to handle the operation’s cases in Paraná, Rio and São Paulo, in a symbol of the end of the investigation

5 opponents

Cristiano Zanin
Unknown at the time, Lula’s lawyer insisted on confronting the Lava Jato authorities and suffered series of defeats in the first years of the operation. He later managed to get the cases annulled.

Gilmar Mendes
The STF minister initially adopted a complimentary tone and endorsed the operation’s causes, but became one of the most acidic critics of Lava Jato from 2016 onwards.

Augusto Aras
The attorney general appointed by Bolsonaro in 2019 complained about the power of the MPF task forces, which were abolished during his administration, and made several public criticisms of the car wash system.

Prerogatives
Gathered in a WhatsApp group, lawyers critical of Lava Jato began to mobilize against the operation, to the point of later becoming a strong force in the Lula government.

Renan Calheiros
The MDB-AL senator was the target of the operation in a series of investigations and was later one of the authors of the Abuse of Authority Law, one of the main political reactions to Lava Jato

5 confusions

Singing at CPI
First arrested in Lava Jato, money changer Nelma Kodama provoked criticism in a CPI session about Petrobras in 2015 when she sang the song “Amada Amante”, by Roberto Carlos, to answer a question about her connection with money changer Alberto Youssef

Rats in the Chamber
Also in CPI, in 2015, a parliamentary advisor protested by releasing rodents in the Congress room used for testimony by PT treasurer, João Vaccari

Lula’s prison
After Moro ordered Lula’s arrest in 2018, the PT member went to the headquarters of the Metalworkers Union in São Bernardo do Campo (SP), and supporters surrounded the building, preventing him from leaving. After riots, he only left the place two days later to surrender to the PF

Hold and release
In July 2018, Lula was serving his sentence in Curitiba and obtained a habeas corpus granted by a judge on duty. Moro took action to prevent his release, in an imbroglio that generated a war of decisions in the second instance of the Federal Court. The PT member ended up not leaving jail that day

Anti-Lava Jato judge
In 2023, with the operation already in serious decline, federal judge Eduardo Appio took over the cases in Curitiba and issued a series of measures reviewing old decisions taken. He was subject to disciplinary proceedings months later because of a phone call to a judge’s son and ended up leaving the Federal Court