PGR under Lula changes and supports investigation against Bolsonaro – 05/15/2023 – Power

The PGR (Attorney General of the Republic) headed by Augusto Aras tried several times to stop the investigation against Jair Bolsonaro (PL) and his advisers and family members during the former president’s government, but changed its stance and started to support the investigation after the arrival of Lula (PT) to the Presidency of the Republic.

Between February and December 2022, under the Bolsonaro government, the PGR manifested itself at least six times asking for the investigation to be closed on the grounds that the evidence was illegal, unconstitutional and that it caused illegal embarrassment to those investigated.

According to the PGR, the decisions of Alexandre de Moraes, of the STF (Federal Supreme Court), which authorized breaches of banking, tax and telematic secrecy by Mauro Cid, Bolsonaro’s assistant, and other presidential advisors violated the procedural system, a since the minister did not hear the Public Prosecutor’s Office about the requests made by the Federal Police.

Sought, the PGR stated that there was “no change of position” and that the manifestations are made in a “technical-legal way, based on the specifics of each procedural moment”.

In the understanding of the Prosecutor’s Office at the time of the Bolsonaro government, as there was already a request to close the investigation made in early 2022, all measures authorized by Moraes were invalid and the evidence null and void.

The investigation against Bolsonaro and his advisors stems from the leak of the investigation of the hacker attack on the TSE (Superior Electoral Court), used by the former president to attack the security of electronic voting machines.

Mauro Cid’s telematic secrecy was broken in this investigation, and the PF was able to access his conversations stored in the cloud and on his cell phone. From then on, the delegate Fabio Shor, responsible for the case, asked for a series of new breaches of secrecy based on the material found with Cid.

It was with these breaches that the PF found audios, conversations and photos in which the suspicions of embezzlement of money from the Presidency emerged in September 2022 by Sheet; and, more recently, fraud in the insertion of data into the Ministry of Health’s vaccination system.

Throughout 2022, under the Bolsonaro administration, the PGR was against breaches of secrecy and asked that all material found be annulled.

In her statements, Lindôra Araújo accused Moraes and the PF of “fishing expedition” or probationary fishing. The term is used to designate when investigators search the intimacy or private life of a target without a specific objective, just to try to identify facts that can be used against that person.

The action in partnership between the PF and Moraes, said the PGR under the Bolsonaro government, appeared to be “disguised as a possible attempt to carry out an unrestrained search for any other elements that could, in any way and even hypothetically, open a new broad and generic in the face of the President of the Republic and, eventually, of his family members”.

In this scenario, said the PGR still in the Bolsonaro government, given the “unconstitutionalities and illegalities” found, the investigation should be extinguished, since “all the evidence collected and derived from it is contaminated by illegality, and cannot be used for criminal prosecution” .

The position, however, completely changed after Lula became president. The PGR then stopped contesting the decisions and, in April, was in favor of using the evidence – previously classified as null and illicit – to carry out searches and arrests in the case of alleged fraud in vaccination cards.

On December 19, 2022, for example, the PGR filed an appeal against a decision by Moraes to authorize the breach of telematic secrecy of a Bolsonaro aide.

As it had done at least five other times before, the PGR classified the evidence as illegal and null to ask for the case to be archived.

A month later, on January 19, the PF asked for a new breach of telematic secrecy by people linked to Bolsonaro. Moraes authorized the breaches on January 26 and, for the first time, the PGR did not file an appeal to challenge the decision. He only manifested himself to warn that he became aware of the minister’s dispatch.

Based on this breach of secrecy and other information collected in a way that was considered illegal by the PGR, the PF asked for the search and seizure of Bolsonaro and Michelle, in addition to the arrest of Mauro Cid and other former advisors on April 18.

Three days later, on April 21, the PGR manifested itself. In the order, like the others signed by Lindôra Araújo, the PGR agreed with the measures and at no time mentioned that the evidence on which they were based was obtained in the investigation once classified as illegal and unconstitutional.

The PGR only opposed the searches against Bolsonaro and Michelle and the arrests of two advisors to the former president, but accepted the requests that targeted Mauro Cid and the others cited in the alleged fraudulent insertion of data into the vaccination system of the Ministry of Health.

Sought to comment on the case, the PGR said that it has not changed its position and that the Public Prosecutor’s Office “is not limited to acting as a body of the prosecution, the private holder of public criminal proceedings, but assumes a fundamental role in monitoring the regularity of the legal system and the own external control of police activity”.

“The manifestation of the PGR favorable or unfavorable to measures claimed in the course of investigation is guided by the analysis of contemporary elements produced in the case file. Likewise, it does not mean a posture of ratification of any act that has been practiced irregularly in the course of investigation,” the Attorney General’s Office said in a statement.

The PGR also stated that one of its attributions is “to guarantee the healthiness in the production of evidence”.

“This is impartial action, aimed at respecting necessary formalities to prevent any nullities in the construction of evidence, a problem registered on more than one occasion in the recent past”, said the Attorney General’s Office.