who is Lula’s lawyer who arrives at the Supreme Court

Lawyer Cristiano Zanin Martins, 47, was approved by the Senate, this Wednesday (21), to occupy a vacancy on the Federal Supreme Court (STF). President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) made official the nomination of his lawyer for the vacancy of retired Minister Ricardo Lewandowski on June 1st.

Approved by the Senate, Zanin will be able to stay in the STF until 2050, when he turns 75, the age of compulsory retirement in the Judiciary.

A PT lawyer since 2013, Zanin has become the greatest symbol of the rise and fall of Operation Lava Jato, but in the opposite direction. If for years he suffered consecutive defeats in the lawsuits against Lula, seeing his client arrested and removed from the 2018 elections, he turned the tables in the following years, reversing the convictions and shelving the more than 20 actions and investigations that targeted him.

Throughout this period, Zanin kept the same line of defense intact: in addition to claiming the innocence of the current president, pointing out the lack of evidence that he would have benefited from deviations from Petrobras, he questioned, in a meticulous and insistent way, numerous procedural acts.

From the beginning, he contested the competence of the 13th Federal Court of Curitiba to concentrate the cases, succeeding in 2021, when the Supreme Court accepted the thesis and annulled Lula’s convictions. In addition, he has always accused former judge and now senator Sergio Moro (União Brasil-PR) of partiality and the prosecutors of the extinct task force to persecute Lula – a thesis also accepted by the STF and which led the investigations to square one and then to prescription.

To this day, Zanin feeds the theory that Moro and former prosecutor and impeached deputy Deltan Dallagol (Podemos-PR) conspired with the United States with the aim of dismantling Petrobras’ strength in the international market and the entry of Brazilian contractors abroad. . Using hacked messages exchanged between the two, it reinforced the narrative of collusion between the judge and the prosecution in the processes of the “Republic of Curitiba”, which also contributed to the dismantling of the largest anti-corruption operation ever seen in the country.

If during its heyday, Lava Jato managed to advance gaining support from the press and public opinion, in addition to cooperation with other countries to obtain evidence, Zanin was not left behind. In the war against the operation, he called on renowned lawyers and jurists outside Brazil, taking Lula’s case to the United Nations (UN), where he also managed to obtain a decision favorable to the PT, importing the theory of “lawfare” into Brazil. of the words “law” and “warfare”.

“It is the strategic use of law for the purpose of delegitimizing, harming or annihilating the enemy”, defined Zanin in the book he released in 2019 on the subject, co-authored with his wife and partner, Valeska Teixeira Martins, and lawyer Rafael Valim. In addition to the counteroffensive against Moro and Dallagnol, he also prosecuted, on Lula’s behalf, dozens of journalists who also investigated, in reports, suspicions of corruption against the president.

But, in addition to freeing Lula, Zanin also opened the Supreme Court gate for countless other defendants in Lava Jato to bury their lawsuits. In a lawsuit filed in 2020, he claimed that Odebrecht’s digital files used by the Federal Public Ministry (MPF) to prove the payment of bribes and slush funds could be tampered with, due to the “obscure way” in which they were transported from Switzerland to Brazil. With that, he managed to get Minister Ricardo Lewandowski, whose chair he will occupy, to annul the validity of the records as evidence and suspend investigations against several politicians, such as vice president Geraldo Alckmin (PSB), the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, Eduardo Paes (PSD), the former president of Fiesp Paulo Skaf (MDB), among many others.

The success in the demolition of Lava Jato gave Zanin notoriety in the political world and made Lula’s confidence in his lawyer grow even more. These were factors that, even before taking office, made him the president’s favorite to replace Lewandowski, also nominated by Lula in 2006 and considered by him the minister most faithful to the PT among all the nominees during the party’s governments. Lula considers that Zanin is loyal and would not “betray” him like other ministers appointed by him and former president Dilma Rousseff. Petistas still resent having supported the nominations of Luiz Fux and Luís Roberto Barroso, due to their liberal bias in the economic area and for having been tough on the party’s corruption scandals that reached the Court.

Zanin also ended up gaining sympathy among the current members of the STF. They manifested themselves in favor of his nomination Gilmar Mendes, the dean and most influential minister of the Court, Cármen Lúcia e Barroso. “It’s a great name, given the victory it won by resurrecting President Lula. And there is no breach of the principle of impersonality. The choice is sovereign for the president, who must appoint a well-qualified jurist in the area of ​​law and trust in him. There is no deviation from purpose”, said retired justice Marco Aurélio Mello at the time that Lula revealed the name he would indicate for the Supreme Court.

Because of his proven guaranteeing profile, it was already taken for granted that his name would be approved with relative ease in the Senate – which, in fact, happened this Wednesday (21): 58 senators voted in favor of Zanin’s nomination for the Supreme and 18 were contrary.

Despite this, in recent months, Zanin has faced resistance in the political world, and not just from Lula’s opponents on the right, uncomfortable with his proximity to the PT; and Lava Jato supporters, fearful that their entry into the STF will further deepen the setback in the fight against corruption.

resistance on the left

There were and still are strong reservations about Zanin, especially on the left. Petistas and lawyers who preferred other names say that, apart from his work in Lava Jato, little is known about what Zanin thinks about themes dear to the progressive field. “He IS a great lawyer, but he is deeply conservative and enigmatic. Nothing is known about what he thinks about the tax issue, the criminalization of homophobia, agrarian law, social movements, ”says a lawyer who circulates in the party circles and is influential in the hard core of the government.

During the sabbath at the Senate Constitution and Justice Committee, Zanin was questioned about the customs agenda. The lawyer insisted on already signed decisions that define regulations. Without expressing a personal position on the issues, Zanin asked that attention be paid to fundamental rights and Congress’ ability to propose new understandings. In the case of abortion, he said it is guided by situations that the legal framework already considers the possibility of termination of pregnancy.

On the left, there is doubt whether Zanin will be really good for the Lula government. The fear is that, like other Lula appointees, the lawyer will not pay attention to the PT and the left – Zanin always said, by the way, that he was never affiliated with the party and never militated in politics.

In 2017, interviewed by a vehicle in Piracicaba, the city where he was born, he said that he had Sobral Pinto as a reference in law, a right-wing lawyer who became famous in the Estado Novo and in the military dictatorship for defending persecuted communist politicians.

“He was a conservative person, but in his work as a lawyer, this was absolutely irrelevant. He defended people from an entirely different ideological spectrum and with the same haughtiness and pugnacity with which he defended people who were on the same ideological spectrum with him. In addition to legal wisdom, he associated this combative and indignant side with injustice,” said Zanin.

Part of the distrust is due to the lawyer’s history before defending the president. Graduated from PUC in São Paulo in 1999, Zanin specialized in civil procedure and business law. Recently, he returned to these areas to defend J&F, in a leniency agreement, and Lojas Americanas, which is facing litigation with creditors after the discovery of an accounting fraud, in which a BRL 20 billion shortfall was revealed in the accounts.

Due to the connection with the high business community, PT supporters are suspicious of their ties, as they think that, with the toga over their shoulders, they can turn against the traditional left. “People are afraid that it will be a Barroso 2.0”, summarizes a magistrate who also knows this group well.

“It is difficult to know what comes of all this. And nobody knows Zanin better than Lula”, says an influential lawyer in Brasilia. For her, most criticism comes from people who would like another name for the STF. Campaigns against favorites always take place behind the scenes when a vacancy arises on the court, because the dispute is great. This time, Zanin’s strongest competitor was the lawyer from Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional (CSN) and former secretary general of the STF Manoel Carlos de Almeida Neto, former advisor to Lewandowski and his favorite for the vacancy.

Opposition to Zanin from segments close to Lula, however, did not prevent his approval in the Senate. Although the lawyer is not part of the known cliques of lawyers in Brasília, he has sought to get closer to parliamentarians in recent months, in order to gain sympathy. He is described as someone very polite and kind, which pleases the political class, always interested in building bridges with the STF and being well received in ministers’ offices.