See delivery of money to driver of Lira advisor – 06/06/2023 – Politics

The Federal Police caught, during the investigation of deviations in robotic kit contracts, an alleged delivery of money to a driver of Luciano Cavalcante, former direct assistant of the President of the Chamber of Deputies, Arthur Lira (PP-AL).

Cavalcante is being investigated in the case and was exonerated this Monday (5) from his position as advisor to the PP’s leadership in the Chamber. He and the driver Wanderson Ribeiro were searched and apprehended in Operation Hephaestus, held on Thursday (1st).

The monitored delivery took place on May 17 of this year and was carried out by the couple Pedro Magno and Juliana Cristina, appointed by the PF as operators of the movement of money, whose origin may be deviations in the public contracts investigated.

As shown to Sheetit was Pedro and Juliana’s monitoring that led the corporation to Arthur Lira’s advisor.

At 3:17 pm that day, the PF filmed Juliana making withdrawals at a bank branch in Brasília while her husband was waiting outside.

After the looting, the couple went to a hotel in Setor Hoteleiro Sul, in the federal capital, and parked the vehicle they were in near Block B. Upon arriving at the location, still according to the recordings, Pedro got out of the car and waited for the arrival of the driver from Cavalcante.

The images show that the two greet each other and head to a Toyota Corolla model vehicle parked at the hotel.

“After the arrival of Wanderson Ribeiro, it is possible to verify in the images that Pedro Magno takes a small backpack in the back seat and, in the company of Luciano Cavalcante’s driver, go to the interior of the black Corolla vehicle that was in Wanderson’s possession”, says the PF .

The police officers who monitored the delivery were able to notice that Pedro and Wanderson arrived at the vehicle and stayed inside it for about 1 minute.

During this period, according to the corporation’s report, “it is possible to state that Pedro Magno leaves packages of money in the glove compartment of the Corolla vehicle” and then returns to the other car where his wife is with the “apparently empty purse”.

After leaving the car, Wanderson entered the hotel and went to apartment number 217. The PF looked for information about that hotel room and discovered that that day the guest was Luciano Cavalcante.

To conclude that the apartment was used by Cavalcante, images of the hotel’s internal circuit were accessed that show him on the same day, the 17th, in the morning, before the supposed delivery of valuables, arriving at the place with the same black car.

Investigators also obtained information from those responsible for parking the hotel and discovered that the Corolla used by Luciano Cavalcante is linked to Wanderson’s name at the establishment.

Lawyer André Callegari, who defends Cavalcante, says that the images “do not indicate any illicit act committed by those investigated, much less by Luciano, who does not even appear in them.”

According to them, the facts will be “duly clarified in the course of investigations.”

Callegari also defends Wanderson and said about the driver’s case that so far he “has only images against him without any proof of an illicit fact practiced.”

Investigators reached the couple after tracking payments from Megalic, the company that won contracts to supply robotics kits to cities in Alagoas.

Based on Megalic’s transactions, the PF began to monitor the couple from Brasília and discovered an intense movement of cash withdrawals in bank branches and subsequent deliveries.

Between November 2022 and January 2023, the police accompanied and filmed at least a dozen trips by the couple to bank branches and deliveries of values ​​in the federal capital, in nearby cities and in Maceió —in the capital of Alagoas, the delivery took place in January of this year.

In this January episode, the couple of operators was caught going to the house of Lira’s advisor and his wife, Glaucia Cavalcante, was filmed driving the vehicle used for delivering valuables.

The same vehicle used in Maceió, according to the Sheetwas used by Lira and declared to the Superior Electoral Court in the 2022 campaign, when the deputy was re-elected.

In a note signed by lawyer Eugênio Aragão, Megalic’s defense stated that there was a “serious mistake” in the suspicions and that all contracts were based on technical parameters of the Ministry of Education and the National Fund for the Development of Education, with a bidding process and wide competitiveness.

The note says that the TCU (Tribunal de Contas da União) did not see any direction or incompatible prices and that the report by the Sheet that gave rise to the investigation improperly compared Megalic’s products with kits of inferior quality.