Toffoli extinguishes lawsuit against Kassab for alleged slush fund – 05/18/2023 – Politics

The minister of the STF (Federal Supreme Court) Dias Toffoli determined the extinction of an improbity action against the former mayor of São Paulo Gilberto Kassab (PSD), current secretary of Government and Institutional Relations of the government Tarcísio de Freitas (Republicans).

The decision, last Tuesday (16), responds to a request by Kassab’s defense and extinguishes the action that was being processed by the 9th Public Treasury Court of São Paulo.

The action was the result of an agreement (called the “autocomposition term”) between Odebrecht and the São Paulo Public Prosecutor’s Office. In a previous decision, Toffoli had already considered this term ineffective.

“The Public Prosecutor’s Office of São Paulo carried out an amendment to the Term of Self-Composition, on 01.06.2021, based on the Anti-Crime Package that amended the Administrative Improbity Law”, argued Kassab’s lawyer, Igor Tamasauskas, to Toffoli.

“At the time of the amendment and ratification of the Self-composition Term, the action would already be time-barred, considering that the -already recognized ineffective- Self-composition Term was signed, in December 2017, for the filing of the action in the same month.”

The minister acknowledged the lawyer’s arguments against continuing the process.

In the action filed against Kassab, the prosecutors claimed that the former mayor committed impropriety for alleged slush funds received from Odebrecht from 2008 to 2014.

The action, based on the testimony of whistleblowers, says that he received more than R$ 21.2 million from the group through unrecorded campaign transfers. The collaborators, however, did not specify what the counterparts of the transfers to Kassab were.

For the promoters, the payment of slush funds constitutes impropriety. They wanted the former mayor to pay BRL 85 million, which would include fines, and asked for the assets to be blocked.