TRF-4 determines suspicion of judge critical of Lava Jato – 09/10/2023 – Power

The Federal Court declared the suspicion of Eduardo Appio, a judge who arrived to take charge of the 13th Federal Court of Curitiba and was openly critical of the methods adopted by Lava Jato in previous years.

The decision was taken on Wednesday (6), the same day that Dias Toffoli, minister of the STF (Supreme Federal Court), determined that the evidence obtained in the operation and which supported Odebrecht’s leniency agreements is useless in any context or degree of jurisdiction.

The eighth panel of the TRF-4 (Federal Regional Court of the 4th region) decided, unanimously, to judge Appio’s suspicion in all cases related to Lava Jato that are being processed in the 13th Federal Court of Curitiba.

Furthermore, the magistrates declared the nullity of all acts carried out by him in these cases.

According to the court, the Federal Public Ministry “presented concrete and objective elements that reveal the judge’s bias in prosecuting and judging cases” related to Lava Jato.

Responsible for the remaining Lava Jato processes in Paraná, Appio had already been removed from his duties by the TRF-4 on May 22 of this year.

He was initially replaced by Gabriela Hardt, who showed greater alignment with the way former judge Sergio Moro led.

At the time, the regional court was investigating whether Appio had called the son of a former Lava Jato rapporteur at TRF-4 pretending to be an employee of the Federal Court.

After having his decisions reviewed, Appio had clashed in April with former rapporteur Marcelo Malucelli, from the TRF, who began to be questioned at the time about his link with former judge Sergio Moro.

Malucelli’s son, lawyer João Eduardo Barreto Malucelli, is a partner of the senator and federal deputy Rosangela Moro (União Brasil-SP) at the Wolff Moro Sociedade de Advocacia office.

Appio took office as head of the 13th Federal Court of Curitiba in February. Since then, he has issued critical decisions to Lava Jato.

The judge has more than 20 years of experience in the Federal Court, in addition to being a prosecutor. He was chosen to take over the Federal Court based on seniority criteria among magistrates who signed up.

At the beginning of May, Appio had annulled the 2017 sentence against the former governor of Rio de Janeiro Sérgio Cabral given by then judge Moro. The decision was reversed by judge Carlos Eduardo Thompson Flores, of the second instance of the TRF-4. According to him, Appio did not respond to questions about his impartiality.

The judge had agreed with Cabral’s defense request to consider Moro’s role in the case partial based on messages exchanged on the Telegram app with former prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol.

The TRF-4 also overturned two decisions by Appio that met requests from the defense of former minister Antonio Palocci. The judge had scheduled a hearing for Palocci to point out possible “excesses and errors” by Lava Jato and released R$35 million from an account linked to the politician.