Tacla Duran: who is he and what does he say about Moro and Lava Jato – 04/23/2023 – Politics

An obscure lawyer who was the target of an arrest warrant for years in Brazil is at the center of a political clash between supporters of President Lula (PT) and the enthusiastic group for Operation Lava Jato, today led in Congress by Senator Sergio Moro (União Brasil- PR) and deputy Deltan Dallagnol (Podemos-PR). Moro was the Lava Jato judge, and Deltan, the chief prosecutor of the task force.

Rodrigo Tacla Duran, who is a defendant in the operation, claims that he was extorted when negotiating a collaboration agreement in Curitiba.

The imbroglio returned to the news after his hearing via video in Curitiba, at the end of March, and the decision of then Minister Ricardo Lewandowski, of the STF, to order the Public Ministry to analyze any evidence of these reports.

start of case

Lawyer Rodrigo Tacla Duran became the target of Lava Jato investigators in 2016, when he was appointed by whistleblowers as a financial operator for contractors. A breach of confidentiality showed that his law firm received BRL 55 million (in unadjusted amounts) from construction companies from 2011 to 2013. As a lawyer, he worked for Odebrecht from 2011 to 2016.

In 2016, he had his arrest decreed by the then judge Sergio Moro in the 36th phase of the operation and was even detained in Spain. He was later released and, because he had Spanish citizenship, his extradition to Brazil was rejected. The preventive detention order issued in Curitiba remained open, and criminal proceedings were initiated against him.

In 2019, testimony given by Tacla Duran to Spanish authorities, two years earlier, was made public, in which he admits to having borrowed bank accounts from his companies in Spain and Singapore to move funds that Odebrecht kept in tax havens.

The charge against the operation

Free in Spain, Tacla Duran began to make accusations against Lava Jato authorities.

Report by Sheet in August 2017, he revealed his account in which he accused a lawyer friend of Moro, Carlos Zucolotto, of trying to intermediate parallel negotiations of whistleblowing with the Lava Jato task force. According to this version, the friend would have made a request for payment of US$ 5 million.

The defendant also claimed that the conversation took place through the Wickr messaging app, which encrypts and can be programmed to erase records.

In one of the messages, says the target of Lava Jato, Moro’s friend said that he would get “DD” to enter the negotiation, in an alleged reference to Deltan Dallagnol.

“Upon being informed of my refusal to admit crimes that I had not committed, the Curitiba prosecutors did not want to talk any more and ended the negotiation”, he said at the time.

Already in that first report, Tacla Duran maintained that these circumstances left Moro in a situation of being “prevented from judging” his case.

Later, the lawyer also said that Zucolotto’s office, which had been a partner of Rosângela Moro, wife of the current senator, was formally his service provider, as a legal correspondent in Curitiba.

political repercussions

The first statements by Tacla Duran served as ammunition for critics of Lava Jato. On the initiative of PT deputies, he testified by videoconference in Congress. In CPI about the JBS meatpacking company, in 2017, he spoke for four hours.

He said that there was a “denunciation industry” in the operation, although he said that he did not accuse Sergio Moro “of anything”. He further stated that, in the app conversations he held, there was no way to copy the images without notifying the interlocutor and that he then took pictures of the conversations, delivered to an expert.

In 2018, a second testimonial took place, also remotely, in a commission of the Chamber of Deputies. It lasted another four and a half hours.

The defense of today’s president Lula, in friction with the Lava Jato authorities, enlisted Tacla Duran as a witness in Curitiba, but Moro did not authorize the hearing.

Representation of PT members

After the lawyer’s first testimony in Congress, a request for investigation into the accusations made by Tacla Duran was filed with the Public Ministry by PT deputies.

The PGR (Attorney General’s Office) heard Lava Jato’s lawyer and prosecutors and, in September 2018, decided to shelve the procedure, stating that “excess or illegality” was not demonstrated in the acts performed.

The document, signed by then Deputy Attorney General Luciano Mariz Maia, said that nothing proved Carlos Zucolotto’s participation in the whistleblowing negotiations and that the alleged messages presented by Tacla Duran “do not prove who the other interlocutor would be”.

During the procedure, Lava Jato prosecutors were questioned and rejected the allegations of parallel negotiations. They said that they even sent a preliminary agreement proposal by email to the lawyer, but that they withdrew from signing a collaboration commitment with him in May 2016.

The filing request does not cite Moro’s carrying out of expertise or hearing.

After the filing, the Tacla Duran case surfaced again in 2020, when there was another attempt at a collaboration agreement with him, this time within the scope of the PGR.

Moro, at the time, said he was perplexed and outraged by this initiative and insinuated that there was a relationship with the fact that he had broken with then-president Jair Bolsonaro (PL) at that time. This attempt at a collaboration agreement did not materialize either.

Case resumed

Still in Spain, Tacla Duran went to the Supreme Court in 2022 to stop the processes he was responding to in Curitiba.

Taking advantage of a decision favorable to Lula, he asked Minister Ricardo Lewandowski that his processes be stopped because the prosecution had evidence delivered by Odebrecht that had been considered invalid by the court.

Lewandowski agreed with the measure in March and suspended the criminal actions in progress in Curitiba against the lawyer. Subsequently, Judge Eduardo Appio, who had taken over the Lava Jato processes in Paraná in February, decided to revoke the old arrest warrant issued against the defendant.

Appio also scheduled an audience, via videoconference, to hear the lawyer. In this statement, on the 27th, Tacla Duran spoke again that she was the victim of extortion in Lava Jato, although she did not clarify details.

He said that he suffered “procedural bullying” from the Public Prosecutor’s Office, including through contacts outside the formal cooperation channels between the countries. “All this because I didn’t give in to extortion,” she said.

He stated that the lawyer Carlos Zucolotto and a person named Fábio Aguayo went to him “to sell Moro’s law office”. Unclearly, at the time, he showed an audio that supposedly dealt with the topic.

Appio decided to stop the hearing because he understood that, as the case involved authorities with a special jurisdiction, the matter was outside his attribution. He decided to send the content to Minister Lewandowski, who had already dispatched Tacla Duran’s criminal action.

The Curitiba judge determined the inclusion of Tacla Duran in the federal witness protection program, “due to the great political and economic power of those involved”.

The Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office immediately criticized the magistrate for holding the hearing, pointing out that it would only have served for the defendant to “elucubrate about alleged evidence that would have been in his possession for years”.

On the eve of retiring, on the last 10th, Lewandowski determined that the procedure relating to Tacla Duran should be processed in the Supreme Court, contrary to Moro’s request for it to remain in the first instance.

The minister also ordered the PGR to carry out a more detailed analysis of the facts and to assess the possible initiation of an investigation. These documents are confidential.

According to Lewandowski, the PGR manifested itself citing “eventual interference by Sergio Moro in the judgment of cases involving Operation Lava Jato —including cases involving Rodrigo Tacla Duran”, after he left the judiciary in 2018.

more chat

The most recent statements by Tacla Duran have rekindled the antagonism of PT and Lava Jato supporters.

PT deputies tried to invite the lawyer to testify at the Chamber’s Financial Inspection Commission. They cited, in a request, an interview by the lawyer with UOL in 2019 in which he also made accusations against lawyer Marlus Arns, citing his alleged link with Moro’s wife, who is now a federal deputy for União Brasil-SP.

At the time, Tacla Duran said that he paid Arns because of an “extortion mechanism” and the fear of being arrested, even before the arrest order issued by Moro. She mentioned that she shelled out $612k in a “first installment”.

On the last 12th, Deltan and opponents of Lula managed to bar the audience.

“Why are you so afraid of Tacla Duran? What’s the problem with listening to him? You can have as many accusations as you want, one may think he’s a criminal, another may think I don’t know what, but what’s the problem with listening to him ?”, said federal deputy Guilherme Boulos (PSOL-SP).

Deltan replied: “There is nothing, besides rumours, frivolous accusations, foam, that the left seeks to do to cover up the crimes committed by the President of the Republic”.

The return to Brazil

Tacla Duran’s return to Brazil after seven years in Europe and the old arrest warrant against him also became an imbroglio in the Judiciary. Judge Appio revoked the arrest warrant issued years ago against the lawyer and scheduled a face-to-face hearing with him this month.

On April 11, second instance judge Marcelo Malucelli, from the Federal Regional Court of the 4th Region, accepted a request from the Federal Public Ministry and overturned Appio’s decision that allowed Tacla Duran access to the evidence of the operation, in person, and also marked the face-to-face hearing in Curitiba. The lawyer then decided not to return to Brazil.

Subsequently, the national justice inspector, Luis Felipe Salomão, asked Malucelli for explanations on the 14th to find out whether the TRF-4 could have acted in the case, since the Supreme Court had paralyzed the process.

Malucelli’s ties to Moro – the federal judge’s son is a partner in the Moro couple’s law firm– were also mentioned in the request for explanations.

Finally, last Thursday (20), Malucelli decided to distance himself from the Lava Jato cases, including that of Tacla Duran, for “intimate reasons”.

What the quotes say

Senator Sergio Moro has since 2017 denied all statements made by Rodrigo Tacla Duran.

Shortly after the testimony on the 27th, Moro stated that the lawyer makes false accusations, “without any evidence, except those that he himself fabricated”.

“This is a person who, after initially denying it, later confessed to professionally laundering money for Odebrecht and had his preventive detention decreed in Lava Jato.”

Deltan Dallagnol, who led the task force until 2020, says that there was a negotiation for a collaboration agreement that did not materialize because the lawyer lied. “He tried to deceive authorities numerous times,” said the deputy.

According to the former prosecutor, the matter is being revived to cover up mistakes made by the current government, of whom he is critical.

wanted by SheetCarlos Zucolotto forwarded a note, in which he states that it is a “reheated” subject, on which the Public Prosecutor’s Office has already determined that it should be archived.

“Once again, I am surprised by the news that the confessed defendant Tacla Duran is making accusations against me. I reiterate what I said elsewhere: I have never met this guy or even exchanged messages with him. Until today, I never had any contact with him, not even through an intermediary.”

Fabio Aguayo said he prefers to speak only when he has complete knowledge of Tacla Duran’s statements.

Marlus Arns expressed himself through a note, stating that, in 2016, his office was hired by Tacla Duran to provide services in the scope of Lava Jato and that the relationship “lasted more than a year and consumed hundreds of hours of work”.

He said that, by law, he is not authorized to discuss any details because he has “a duty to maintain professional secrecy”.

“I work throughout Brazil, in the criminal area, with special emphasis in the area of ​​economic criminal law. It’s been more than 30 years without any blemish, lawsuit or disciplinary procedure before the OAB or any other body. Operation Lava Jato was just one of the dozens of operations that I acted”, he added.