Lava Jato: Actions against Cunha and Cabral may expire – 03/10/2024 – Power
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Lava Jato cases involving the former president of the Chamber Eduardo Cunha and the former governor Sérgio Cabral are on the verge of prescription or have already expired in the Rio Electoral Court.
The records of these cases and other related investigations were being processed in the Federal Court, but ended up being partially annulled after the STF (Supreme Federal Court) decided in 2019 that crimes such as corruption and money laundering, when investigated together with slush funds, should be tried. by electoral courts.
Cunha and Cabral, both ex-MDB, were two of the best-known prisoners of Lava Jato, an operation that turns ten years old next Monday (17). The former federal deputy was detained for three and a half years, and the former governor, six.
In the case of Cunha, two processes in which the Supreme Court annulled Federal Court convictions (in 2021 and 2023) only had the complaints accepted again in the Rio Electoral Court this year.
Authorities monitoring the processes see the possibility that some of Cunha’s conduct is already prescribed — when there is no longer any way for the State to prosecute someone for having passed a certain period of time.
Furthermore, the former president of the Chamber is 65 years old and will benefit from a shorter prescription period when he turns 70.
In one of the cases, Cunha was sentenced in 2017 by then judge Sergio Moro to 15 years and 4 months in prison in a case related to the receipt and movement of US$1.5 million in secret accounts in Switzerland.
The money, according to Lava Jato, comes from payment by Petrobras for the purchase of part of an oil field in Benin, Africa, in 2011. The TRF-4 (Regional Federal Court of the 4th Region) later reduced the penalty imposed by I have lived for 14 years and six months.
In another action, the former deputy was sentenced in 2020 by judge Luiz Antônio Bonat, who succeeded Moro in the Lava Jato court, to 15 years and 11 months in prison for passive corruption and money laundering.
According to the decision, he had received R$1.5 million in undue advantages arising from Petrobras drillship supply contracts.
Both convictions were annulled by the Supreme Court and the cases were sent to the Electoral Court.
Cunha has always denied having committed irregularities. The former deputy’s defense argued, in recent years, that he was the target of persecution and unfair conviction. The lawyers had also asked for the cases to be sent to the Electoral Court.
When contacted about the complaints accepted this year by the Electoral Court, Cunha’s lawyers said they would not comment. He left jail in 2020 and tried to return to the Chamber in 2022, for PTB-SP, but was not elected.
One of the actions of the Electoral Court of Rio that has already prescribed involves Sérgio Cabral. In it, there was suspicion of money laundering in his re-election campaign in 2010, with the purchase of material from a printing company that supposedly did not exist.
Lava Jato cases and other operations, which were being processed in criminal courts, began to be forwarded to the Electoral Court following a 2019 STF decision.
The decision was considered a major defeat for Lava Jato, and the Attorney General’s Office had been warning that there was no structure in the Electoral Court to deal with processes of the complexity of the operation’s cases.
Such as Sheet showed last year, the sending to the Electoral Court benefited a series of former governors who were the target of operations on suspicion of irregularities involving common and electoral crimes.
After the 2019 Supreme Court decision, the TRE-RJ (Rio Regional Electoral Court) created in September of that year the so-called NAC (Criminal Advisory Center).
The nucleus is responsible for analyzing the Lava Jato processes, as well as actions related to other police operations against politicians and businesspeople in Rio.
For example, processes originating from Operation Furna da Onça, one of the most emblematic phases of the Lava Jato River branch, were sent to the nucleus.
In Furna da Onça, suspicions of a corruption and money laundering scheme involving state deputies, in addition to Cabral, were investigated.
A complaint involving Cabral, who arrested state deputies in 2018, was being processed in the Federal Court until March 2021, when STF Minister Gilmar Mendes ordered the case to go to the Electoral Court.
Until last December, two judges worked at the core of the Electoral Court. This year there were three.
According to people who follow the processes, most of the Lava Jato cases that were sent to the Electoral Court are still in the Federal Police investigation phase. Even though part of the evidence can be reused, another portion had to be redone, especially the taking of statements.
In Operation Furna da Onça it was necessary to dismember the process, since there are many accused and not all of them were cited (an act that calls on the person to be part of the process).
Others had to be cited again, even those who had already been arrested at the federal level.
One of the people who follow the cases states that, in this situation, the process “turns into chaos”, as criminal proceedings begin again over acts that have already been investigated by other bodies of justice. The steps become null and need to be redone.
One of the few initiatives related to Lava Jato that was successful in the Electoral Court, albeit for a short period of time, took place in São Paulo.
In 2020, a task force of prosecutors was implemented in the state to unravel accusations made by whistleblowers from large companies, in an initiative dubbed “Electoral Lava Jato”.
One of the main cases involved the former governor of São Paulo and current vice-president, Geraldo Alckmin (now PSB), but it ended up being locked in December 2022 by minister Ricardo Lewandowski, then at the STF, now in charge of the Justice department.
Lewandowski considered that the prosecution used evidence from the leniency agreement of the construction company Odebrecht (currently Novonor) that had already been invalidated in decisions against other defendants, including President Lula (PT).
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