Luiz Estevão obtains pardon after Bolsonaro’s decree – 03/13/2023 – Power

Businessman Luiz Estevão obtained a pardon for his convictions based on the last Christmas pardon decree of former President Jair Bolsonaro (PL).

The decision was taken on the 7th. Estevão filed the application on the 26th of December, four days after the decree was issued, as revealed by Sheet in January.

When contacted, lawyer Marcelo Bessa, who defends Estevão, said he would not comment on ongoing lawsuits.

The businessman, on the other hand, stated that “the pardons granted since the government of former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso until the first year of former President Michel Temer were much more comprehensive” than the one edited by Bolsonaro. “I don’t see anything innovative, it is partially repeating what was in pardons for 20 years in Brazil”, he pointed out.

Estevão also stated that granting the pardon “makes no difference” to him, who was already in the open regime. “The only difference with the pardon is that I don’t have to get home at midnight and wait 6 hours to leave. Since I’m not into that, it doesn’t change anything”, he explained.

Bolsonaro included an unprecedented article in the Christmas pardon that benefited the businessman, owner of the Metrópoles portal.

Article 4 of the text says that “Christmas pardon will be granted to persons over 70 years of age, sentenced to deprivation of liberty, who have served at least one third of the sentence”.

Estevão, who is 73 years old, meets both criteria. In 2016, the STF (Federal Supreme Court) denied his last appeals and the businessman began serving his sentence in Brasília for active corruption, embezzlement and embezzlement. In 2019, he moved to the semi-open regime and, in 2021, to the open one, under house arrest.

The type of crime committed by Estevão is not covered by the Christmas pardon since Bolsonaro came to the Presidency, but the former president made an exception precisely for the article used by the businessman. This is because in the same text there is a caveat that for people over 70 years of age, conviction for corruption and embezzlement, among other crimes, will not be an impediment to obtaining a pardon.

The inclusion of the article used by the businessman was atypical for Bolsonaro’s standard of conduct. In addition to allowing those convicted of corruption to be pardoned, which was unprecedented, the 2022 decree also did not focus only on the military and police class, as in previous years.

The category, however, was not completely ignored, and another article in the pardon allowed for the pardon of the sentences of the police officers involved in the Carandiru massacre. The point was dropped, provisionally, by decision of Minister Rosa Weber.

In pre-Bolsonaro governments, Christmas pardons for elderly prisoners were common, but with conditions and more restrictive depending on the crimes committed, according to experts heard and who asked not to have their names published.

The pardon means that those convicted of these crimes will not need to serve the punishments for which they were sentenced, although the conviction remains on the defendant’s record.