STF suspends Lava Jato process that investigates alleged donations to the Lula Institute

Minister Ricardo Lewandowski, of the Federal Supreme Court (STF), suspended the criminal action that investigates alleged irregular donations of BRL 4 million to the Lula Institute, within the scope of the investigations of Operation Lava Jato.

The process was pending in the Federal Court of Brasilia and involved the director of the institute, Paulo Okamoto, and former minister Antonio Palocci, among others. (see in full)

The action investigated alleged donations by the contractor to the institute between December 2013 and March 2014 through the so-called “Structured Operations Sector” of the former contractor Odebrecht.

In the decision handed down on February 10 and released this Tuesday (14), the magistrate states that the evidence against Okamoto was “declared useless” by the Second Panel of the STF after a request by the director’s defense, who claimed that the material was collected in an irregular negotiation of the contractor’s leniency agreement without following legal criteria.

Okamoto’s defense alleged that when the STF declared the incompetence of former judge Sérgio Moro for the trial of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT), “it also implicitly recognized the incompetence of the members of the Lava Jato task force responsible for the investigations and, at the end, by the presentation of the complaint”.

Lewandowski reinforced the decision of the Second Panel handed down in April last year, declaring the “uselessness of the leniency agreement as a means of proof against the claimant, in view of the irremediable vices that contaminate elements of conviction resulting from it”.

“In effect, as seen previously, the worthlessness of the evidence questioned by the applicant was attested in a decision of the Second Panel of the STF – final and unappealable, repeat -, in view of the proven contamination of the evidentiary material collected by the 13th Federal Court of Curitiba , where the actions filed against the original claimant were being processed, either because of their inadequate handling, or even because of incompetence and suspicion of the officiating magistrate”, justifies the minister in the decision.