PGR retreats in corruption allegation against Lira in the STF – 04/04/2023 – Power

The PGR (Attorney General of the Republic) went back and asked this Tuesday (4) the STF (Federal Supreme Court) to reject a complaint that it had filed against the mayor, Arthur Lira (PP-AL) .

The case represents one of the main pending issues against Lira, in which the deputy is accused of corruption after a former advisor was caught carrying R$106,400 in cash.

The complaint received approval from the Supreme Court in 2019, but the process has not moved much since then. In 2020, Minister Dias Toffoli asked for a review (more time for analysis) and the action was paralyzed.

Now, the Deputy Attorney General of the Republic Lindôra Araújo asked for the withdrawal of the complaint citing the absence of just cause, with exception in the event of the emergence of new evidence.

Lindôra cited as an argument the new legislation of the anti-crime package, enacted in 2019, and the STF’s new understanding of the insufficiency, to support the opening of criminal proceedings, of testimonies by whistleblowers which are not accompanied by supporting evidence.

The demonstration was in response to a request made by Lira’s defense in the process. The case is being reported by Minister André Mendonça.

“The existence of the minimum evidentiary ballast indispensable for the initiation of criminal proceedings against the said defendant has not been demonstrated. -searcher.

In the complaint, the then Attorney General of the Republic Raquel Dodge had asked for Lira’s conviction for passive corruption, an offense with a penalty of up to 12 years in prison. The piece also included the crime of money laundering, but the ministers had already rejected this framework.

The money was seized from then-parliamentary advisor Jaymerson Gomes de Amorim in February 2012, when he tried to board a flight at Congonhas Airport carrying the amount in his clothes and next to his body.

The plane ticket had been purchased with Lira’s credit card and, according to the investigation, the two exchanged messages and phone calls on the day of the episode.

The Attorney General concluded that the money transported by the advisor consisted of a payment made to Lira by Francisco Colombo, then president of the state-owned CBTU (Companhia Brasileira de Trens Urbanos), to remain in office.

At the time, the company was part of the hierarchy of the Ministry of Cities, commanded by the PP in the Dilma Rousseff (PT) government.

The Public Prosecutor’s Office uses deposition testimonies from the money changer Alberto Youssef, pivot of Operation Lava Jato, to establish the link between the CBTU leader and Lira. Francisco Colombo died in 2014.

Lindôra maintained that Youssef narrated facts, mostly, in “heard” or so interpreted, but did not participate in them.

According to her, the reports are difficult to prove, “not only considering the time span that has elapsed, but associated with the fact that the death of Francisco Colombo greatly increases the difficulty in discovering new evidence able to corroborate the complaint”.

The progress of this case in the STF is decisive for defining a possible legal impediment for the President of the Chamber to assume the Presidency of the Republic in case of absence of the incumbents.