Moro exposes Lava Jato siege and arrives isolated on trial – 01/22/2024 – Power

The trial that could revoke the mandate of Sergio Moro (União Brasil-PR) and the inquiry recently opened at the STF (Supreme Federal Court) could consolidate in 2024 the crusade of members of politics and higher courts against the senator, in addition to burying Lava Jato.

The scenario of isolation that Moro experiences in the political and legal world increases the risk experienced this year by former administration minister Jair Bolsonaro (PL).

The main protagonist of the operation that uncovered cases of corruption in PT governments and which was largely annulled for resorting to illegal maneuvers in the investigations, the former judge should be tried at the beginning of this year by the TRE-PR (Regional Electoral Court of Paraná) .

The court will analyze an action that could lead to his impeachment and, even if he obtains a victory in the regional court, there is a chance that the case will go to the TSE (Superior Electoral Court), which has an even more adverse formation to the former magistrate. .

The cases against Moro are being processed in a context of the senator’s isolation in both the Legislature and the Judiciary in Brasília.

At the height of Lava Jato’s popularity, the higher courts endorsed practically all of its decisions and the political class was afraid to criticize the operation. Now, the environment is the opposite, which increases the chance of the former judge suffering setbacks in the actions he responds to.

Until the beginning of 2024, the electoral process that features an unusual alliance against him, which united President Lula’s PT and Bolsonaro’s PL, was the senator’s main reason for concern.

However, in the middle of this month he also began to respond to a criminal investigation before the Supreme Court. Minister Dias Toffoli ordered the opening of an investigation to investigate Moro’s role in the plea agreement signed by former deputy Tony Garcia 20 years ago, in 2004, in the context of the Banestado case.

The fact that Toffoli is the rapporteur of the case, in fact, increases the risk experienced by the former judge. The Supreme Court judge is one of the main executioners of Lava Jato at the top of the Judiciary.

It was he who imposed one of the most extensive defeats on the operation last year, when he determined that the evidence arising from Odebrecht’s leniency agreements and also from the Drousys and MyWebDay systems —respectively internal communication and accounting and control of payments of undue advantages— are useless in any scope or degree of jurisdiction.

He was also the minister who annulled the fine of R$10.3 billion imposed on J&F in the leniency agreement of the group of brothers Joesley and Wesley Batista. And not only that: in the same decision, the judge authorized the business group to have access to the full messages from Operation Spoofing, which includes conversations from members of Lava Jato.

Now a similar request is in the hands of the minister, but from Novonor (formerly Odebrecht). The construction company requested the suspension of the fine in its leniency agreement and access to dialogues exchanged on messaging applications between Lava Jato prosecutors among themselves and with Moro, then responsible for the operation.

Since leaving the judiciary to become Bolsonaro’s Minister of Justice at the beginning of 2019, Moro has suffered serial defeats in the STF.

The most symbolic of these was the annulment of the convictions against Lula when he was head of the 13th Federal Court of Curitiba. The decision, in addition to creating a precedent that led to the overturn of other sentences, also kept the PT member eligible again and made his election to the Presidency possible in the last election, which made the environment even more hostile to the former judge.

As a reaction to the siege that was closing against him, Moro decided to launch a candidacy for head of the Executive to face Lula and also Bolsonaro, of whom he had become an enemy for having stated that the former president tried to violate the autonomy of the Federal Police to protect his family.

The difficulty in forming alliances due to the restriction of the political world with him and becoming electorally viable made him retreat. Moro preferred to run for the Senate initially in São Paulo, but changing his electoral domicile was blocked. He then opted for his home state, Paraná, and won the election with 33% of the votes.

Now, the former judge has told interlocutors that he intends to run for the government of Paraná in the next election, in a sign that he will not become president and does not pose a risk to ongoing national power projects, in an attempt to alleviate the pressure on his situation. before the Court.

Just like Moro, the former head of the Lava Jato task force at the Federal Public Ministry, Deltan Dallagnol (Novo-PR), also entered politics and was elected in 2022 the most voted federal deputy in Paraná.

Not even the significant vote, however, was enough to overcome the animosity of Brasília’s politicians and magistrates towards him, which is seen by Brasília’s political actors as a foreshadowing of what will happen with Moro.

Although he did not exactly meet the ineligibility requirements, the TSE (Superior Electoral Court) made an expansive interpretation of the law to revoke Deltan.

The legislation determines that members of the Public Ministry who request dismissal with PAD (disciplinary administrative proceedings) pending must be declared ineligible. The former Lava Jato coordinator, however, did not respond to procedures of this nature when he left the institution in 2021.

The seven ministers of the electoral court, however, understood that Deltan tried to defraud the law due to the fact that he left the Federal Public Ministry when he was responding to procedures that, later, could turn into PAD.

In Moro’s case, the electoral action filed by PT and PL accuses him of having made irregular expenses in the pre-campaign period. The actions trace a narrative line starting from his affiliation with Podemos, in November 2021, when the current senator was still aiming to run for President.

Among the main spending fronts targeted by the PL’s action are the production of videos and advertising, electoral research, private security, armored vehicles, legal consultancy, stating that the majority of them would have been carried out in a disguised way, as if they were hiring for activities partisan, not electoral.

For the PL, the volume of expenses for Moro’s benefit was excessive when compared to the spending ceiling for the Senate election. They claim that disregarding this fact will set “heinous precedents” for future elections.

“Without sufficient reprimand from the Judiciary, implicit permission will remain for any political party or would-be candidate to promote a waste of resources and excessively expose one of the competitors in order to, in the middle of the game, ‘convert’ the candidacy to another position whose spending limit be inferior”, says the initial.

The PT’s accusations are similar. Now, it will be up to TRE-PR to decide whether he should be impeached, which would lead to a new election for senator in Paraná, or not.