Serious blow to the Anti-corruption fight: tapes of conversations between Ex-judge Sérgio Moro and the Anti-corruption unit showing illegal collusion in the case of the sentencing of Ex-President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Justice Minister Sergio Moro (right) with President Jair Bolsonaro (archive image)
“The absurd secret agreements between the court and the Prosecutor’s office calls” the political scientist Sérgio Praça from the Brazilian Think-Tank Fundação Getúlio Vargas, the well emerged after talks between the former Federal judge and current Minister of justice Sérgio Moro, and the investigators of the Anti-corruption unit “Operation car wash”. On Monday, the US investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald had published in the Messenger service Telegram talks on his website “The Intercept”. And so a political earthquake in Brazil triggered.
In the talks, Moro-oriented investigators, and makes arrangements with them. This is prohibited under Brazilian law, since the judge must be impartial. “In any other country this would be a scandal that would force the Minister to immediately rescind the contract and immediately internal investigations against the prosecutors would trigger”, so square compared to the DW. In fact, on Monday that internal investigations were initiated against the special unit.
Specifically, it deals with the case of Ex-President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2010), who was convicted of Moro mid-2017 because of money laundering and corruption. It was only one of several charges against the popular politician in the context of the corruption scandal surrounding the semi-state energy giant Petrobrás. Since 2014, the justice revealed a gigantic network of corruption, in which politicians of almost all parties, managers of state enterprises, as well as the influence of entrepreneurs caught rich.
Doubts about Evidence against Lula
The greatest Triumph of the investigation, Lula’s detention was in April 2018. Lula is said to have received as a thank you for the favor of companies a luxury Apartment in the seaside resort of Guarujá. The Ex-President denies this. In the published conversations of doubt, the chief investigator Deltan Dallagnol, the stitch of the evidence against Lula, obviously.
The recordings were probably caused by hacker attacks, stolen. In court, you may be therefore not used. “Ultimately, however, it is not so important, whether it is a hacker’s attack, finally, the information of public interest,” says Sérgio Praça are. In 2016, the Moro self-published a illegal dialogue conversation between Lula and the former President, Dilma Rousseff, reminds the analyst. “Now, since it goes against they themselves may not be anything like that.”
Justice Minister Moro defended on Monday the talks between judges and prosecutors as “normal”. Praça sees it differently. “This is absurd. If discussions between judges and investigators are commonplace, they are also corrupt, because this is now banned in Brazil. The judge must be impartial and must not construct with other evidence.” In the reverse conclusion does not, however, it proved automatically the innocence of Lula’s. Still additional processes and numerous evidence against the politicians, so the Praça existed.
Lula by arrest of candidacy detained?
The revelations throw a shadow on the work of the Brazilian judiciary. Particularly difficult for the conscious manipulation of weigh-in to prevent an electoral victory of Lula’s workers ‘ party PT (Partido dos Trabalhadores) in October 2018. From the conversation recordings show that both Moro as well as the investigators tried to damage the replacement candidate of the PT, Fernando Haddad,. This was filled in after Lula was not allowed to compete due to his arrest.
So Moro had been published a few days before the first ballot at the beginning of October, parts of a secret leniency statement that Lula and the PT loaded. To not damage aware of a candidacy, to the PT of the Power to keep away – “if it’s not a crime, then I know what one is supposed to be,” said square.
Biased judges: procedures to Lula’s arrest on the agenda once again
In Lula’s absence, the right-wing populist had won Jair Messias Bolsonaro, a declared enemy of Lula’s elections. A few days after his Triumph, he announced to a Federal judge of Moro to the new Minister of justice, appoint. Lula’s defense had made the request, whose conviction due to bias of the judge should be repealed. After the compromising recordings were released on Monday, the Supreme court judge Gilmar Mendes of the request of Lula’s defense back on the agenda.
Mendes and other Top judges Moro and the corruption investigators to be critical. This exceeded on a regular basis their skills, the judges said. Particularly, the application of the excessive length of pretrial detention to Suspects as well as the use of leniency statements would only lead to criticism. In addition, the judge against the detention begins after a conviction in the second instance. They argue instead that prison sentences are only after the exhaustion of all four instances is possible.
Controversy surrounding prison after conviction in the second instance
So far, the majority of the Supreme court had legitimized the early prison, however, and Lula’s detention allowed. Now a change of position of the court is imminent. “If you put Lula now on, the detention after the second instance at the end, and it would be a retrograde step,” said political scientist Ricardo Ismael, compared to the DW. “But this would trigger a reaction within the society, it would come to demonstrations against the Supreme court and in support of Sérgio Moro.” After all, this is still extremely popular, so Ishmael.
Will be difficult also for the adoption of Moros Anti-corruption laws in the Congress. Already before the publication of the recordings, many politicians had been tightening against the law. “Many of the members do not want to say that this law is passed a package,” said Ishmael. “And now it has become much more difficult.”