STF wing dismisses Moro’s arrest, but defends pressure – 04/18/2023 – Politics

A wing of the STF (Federal Supreme Court) considers it unlikely that the request by the PGR (Attorney General of the Republic) for Senator Sergio Moro (União Brasil-PR) to be sentenced to prison will in fact lead the former Lava Jato judge to the jail.

Ministers critical of the operation led by the then magistrate between 2014 and 2019, however, assess that the Prosecutor’s Office is important for keeping Moro under pressure.

The argument is that the former judge is now a parliamentarian and, as such, needs to be extra cautious about his own actions and statements.

The move by a part of the court to pressure the senator also involves the decision of former minister Ricardo Lewandowski, shortly before retiring, to establish the court as competent to investigate statements by lawyer Rodrigo Tacla Duran against Moro and former prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol, now deputy for Podemos-PR.

Minister Gilmar Mendes, who triggered the PGR against Moro, told people close to him that the former magistrate needs to respect the Senate and remember that he is no longer in Curitiba, referring to the 13th Federal Court of the capital of Paraná, a unit of Federal Justice who was responsible for Lava Jato.

Although they believe that the PGR’s complaint serves to wear down the parliamentarian, Moro’s arrest is ruled out by a wing of the Supreme Court. The opinion takes into account the fact that it is very unusual for the crime of slander to be enough for an arrest, much less in a closed regime.

Allies of Moro, in turn, claim, behind the scenes, that the Attorney General’s Office has acted in a political manner and that the attorney general, Augusto Aras, uses the senator to make gestures to Lula and try to make his reappointment at the head of the institution feasible.

The analysis is that Moro has consolidated himself as Lula’s main opponent and that the performance of the Attorney General’s Office in the case of Tacla Duran, added to the case of the slander of Gilmar, can qualify Aras to be kept in office by Lula.

The complaint is signed by the Deputy Attorney General, Lindôra Araújo, number two in the body and one of Aras’ main allies in the PGR.

Last Friday (14), a video went viral on social networks in which the former judge appears telling interlocutors about “buying a habeas corpus from Gilmar Mendes”.

Deputy Attorney General of the Republic, Lindôra Maria Araújo, asks that the senator be sentenced to prison and that, if the sentence exceeds four years, he loses his mandate.

Araújo claims that Moro committed the crime of slander, which is provided for in the Penal Code and provides for a prison sentence of six months to two years.

It also says that Moro’s conduct fits into situations that require the extension of this sentence, such as the fact that it is directed at a member of the STF and in the presence of several people. He also mentions the section of the law that establishes the application of triple the penalty when “the crime is committed or disclosed in any form of social networks on the world wide web”.

“By falsely attributing the practice of the crime of passive corruption to the Minister of the Federal Supreme Court Gilmar Ferreira Mendes, the accused Sergio Fernando Moro acted with the clear intention of tarnishing the image and objective honor of the offended party, trying to discredit his performance as a magistrate of the highest court in the country,” says the PGR document.

The deputy prosecutor also claims that the former judge uttered the sentence in public, “in the presence of several people, with the knowledge that he was being recorded by a third party, which facilitated the dissemination of the slanderous statement, which became public in April 14, 2023, gaining wide repercussions in the national press and social networks of the world wide web”.

The case was distributed this Monday and will be reported by Minister Cármen Lúcia, who will notify Moro to submit a response within 15 days. After that moment, the minister releases the PGR complaint for collective judgment at the Supreme Court, in virtual or physical plenary.

If the complaint is accepted, Moro will become a defendant and the so-called procedural instruction will begin, which consists of hearing witnesses for the defense, prosecution, and collection of evidence, for example.

Subsequently, the STF will decide whether or not to condemn the former judge. If there is a conviction, the penalty can be converted into the provision of services, if it is small, and there is still the possibility of Moro closing an agreement.

This Monday, Moro spoke about the case in the Senate, claimed to have been taken by surprise by the complaint without having been heard and criticized what he called “sharpening” by the PGR.

“I regret that the attorney general of the Republic sees the possibility of denouncing a senator of the Republic and asking for his arrest so easily. I do not want this to be the Brazil that we want and towards which we want to walk”, he said.

“Now, I am concerned as a senator of the Republic where we are heading in this country when we see this rush and the filing of a criminal action, without the care of listening to a senator, asking for the arrest of a senator for something that was clarified on Friday itself. fair, which did not represent what the senator thought.”

Moro commented that he was contacted on Friday, when the video surfaced, and justified himself by saying that the case was a joke and that he maintains “deep respect for the Supreme Court”.

“On Friday, people I don’t know, but with malicious intent, edited fragments of a speech, took these lines out of context and published them on the internet with one sole objective, to alienate me from the Federal Supreme Court”, said the former judge.

“Today, three days later, I was surprised by a complaint from the attorney general of the republic asking for my arrest, the arrest of a senator of the republic. clarify and completely ignoring the explanations I gave of that speech.”

According to Moro, the editing of the video was done by the “same people” who currently seek to incriminate him “falsely in other processes” with the aim of alienating him from the STF.