TSE files lawsuits against PT, PP and MDB from Lava Jato

The ministers of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) filed this Thursday (30), unanimously, three processes that investigated the alleged receipt, by the PT, MDB and PP, of resources diverted from Petrobras, in the form of bribes paid by contractors who had state contracts. The scheme was revealed by Operation Lava Jato in 2014.

According to investigations, companies donated 1% to 3% of what they received from the state-owned company to the parties. PT, MDB and PP started to be accused in the TSE of obtaining resources from a forbidden source, in this case, a public company. The punishment would be the suspension of transfers from the Partisan Fund.

In 2020, the then president of the TSE, Rosa Weber, voted to dismiss the cases, and was followed at the time by Minister Edson Fachin. The then Corregidor General of the Electoral Justice, Luís Felipe Salomão, asked for a review and paralyzed the trial.

This Thursday, it was resumed with the vote of his substitute and new magistrate, Benedito Gonçalves, who agreed with the shelving. He was followed by Ricardo Lewandowski, Raul Araújo, Carlos Horbach and Sergio Banhos. Alexandre de Moraes and Cármen Lúcia did not vote, because they replaced Weber and Fachin, who had already voted.

“To simplify the judgment, the three representations here, the three, would be that political parties represented in previous years, through service providers, could configure financing from a prohibited source. The three rapporteurs understand that there is not the slightest amount of evidence to be able to continue the investigation and they vote for the archiving, which I am following, in short”, said Benedito.

There was no further discussion between the ministers and the representations were archived.

The transfer of funds from contractors to the parties was confirmed to the TSE by former director of Petrobras Paulo Roberto Costa and money changer Alberto Youssef, both whistleblowers in Lava Jato.

“Within the boards of Petrobras, there was a stronger role, you know, of… the PT, in the Board of Services, which was responsible for all Petrobras contracts, whether in my area, whether in the gas and energy, whether in the area of ​​exploration and production. In the international area, right, there was also this participation of the PMDB and in my area, very strong, of the PP, although there were also requests from the PMDB, mainly from 2006, and also, sporadically, from the PT”, said Paulo Roberto Costa in the process.

“It wasn’t just the Progressive Party that worked with contractors on the Petrobras issue. The Workers’ Party worked, which also had its percentage, and the PMDB also worked, which had its percentage,” said Youssef.

At the beginning of the processes, Minister Gilmar Mendes, who was a member of the TSE, stated that the scheme consisted of “kickbacks disguised as donations” to parties. “Contractors corrupted public agents to sign contracts with Petrobras, through bidding fraud and forming a cartel. Part of the bribe would return to the PT in the form of donations accounted for to the caption and election campaigns. Another part would be delivered in cash to the party treasurer. A third would finance the association through hidden indirect donations, especially through publicity”, he described at the time.

In 2016, Minister Maria Thereza de Assis Moura, then Electoral Inspector General, drew attention to the seriousness of the cases. “They demonstrate complete distortion in the system of representative democracy. More than unbalancing any dispute, they violate numerous principles, not only constitutional, but also the most basic ones that are expected to guide human coexistence in society. Once such conduct is proven, we would be facing the commission of crimes aimed at gaining power and/or maintaining it, nothing much different, therefore, from the barbaric periods in which crimes were also committed to attain power”, she wrote.

In its defense in the process, the PT claimed that it had its accounts approved by the TSE itself, that the case should be time-barred and that the Lava Jato evidence could not be used in the electoral context. The PP asked for the filing claiming “lack of delimitation of the object”.

And the MDB said that there was a lack of “just cause”, because the investigation would be based only on “testimonies of those convicted in criminal proceedings and mere indications of conduct considered as allegedly irregularities”. He stated that the representation is “clearly founded on mere inferences and generic arguments, incapable of individualizing any criminal or electoral infractions, much less the alleged offenders”.