Former Lava Jato prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol (Podemos-PR).| Photo: Archive/Gazeta do Povo.

The Attorney General’s Office (PGR) sent this Friday (26) an opinion to the Federal Supreme Court (STF) to annul the conviction of former Lava Jato prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol (Podemos-PR) to pay compensation to the president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) in the case of PowerPoint. In March 2022, the Superior Court of Justice (STJ) sentenced Dallagnol to pay R$75,000 in moral damages to Lula. Then, the former prosecutor appealed to the STF to annul the decision.

In the opinion sent to the Court, the deputy prosecutor Wagner Natal Batista understood that the conviction should be annulled for violating the jurisprudence on the accountability of public agents. Batista considered that accountability for irregularities is not applied directly to the server, who responds for the facts only after conviction by the Public Power, informed Agência Brasil.

“The judgment under appeal concluded that the public agent was standing as a defendant, condemning him to pay compensation for moral damages, doing so in a diametrically opposite sense to what remained fixed in general repercussions by the Federal Supreme Court”, he wrote.

The case is reported by Minister Cármen Lúcia. There is no deadline for judgment. In 2016, the then head of the Lava Jato task force made a PowerPoint presentation to accuse Lula, who was being investigated by the operation, of leading a criminal organization. Subsequently, the processes were annulled after the STF considered former judge Sergio Moro partial in conducting the investigation.

On the occasion, Cristiano Zanin, Lula’s lawyer, questioned Dallagnol’s functional conduct. According to him, the former prosecutor and other members of Lava Jato used the PowerPoint presentation to accuse the PT candidate of acting as a “commander and conductor of a criminal organization”. For the STJ, the former prosecutor used discrediting terms and non-technical language in relation to the former president.