By Arkady Petrov
RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Former president Lula’s attorneys claim he has been held as a political prisoner for more than a year as a result of a leniency agreement crafted by the Federal Prosecutor’s Office. The claim is based upon new messages from “Vaza Jato”, released on Sunday, June 30th, by Folha de S.Paulo in association with The Intercept.
These recent leaks state that the testimony of informant Léo Pinheiro, head of construction company OAS and the central witness in the case against Lula, only became credible to the Lava Jato task force after he changed his version of events and accused former president Lula, averring that the renovations to the Guarujá triplex apartment were compensation for kickbacks from Petrobras contracts.
In other words, Pinheiro only became a believable whistleblower after he had been pressured into saying what Lava Jato wanted him to say.
Why are these latest revelations so important?
In 2017, former President Lula was jailed after he was found guilty of having received the apartment complex on the beach in Guarujá, São Paulo, as a bribe from construction company OAS, in exchange for its being favored in contracts with state-controlled oil giant Petrobras.
At that time the Lava Jato investigations were looking into an elaborate pay-to-play system under which companies bribed Petrobras executives in exchange for contracts. Some of the proceeds were allegedly used to fund electoral campaigns.
The main evidence, in this case, was the informant’s affirmation – which is not considered as per se proof by Brazilian legislation – that the apartment was destined for Lula and his family.
In Pinheiro’s initial statements he did not claim Lula was involved in the corruption arrangements. But his later version of the facts changed suddenly, as he faced the threat of his own imprisonment.
Lula has repeatedly denied that he ever owned the Guarujá apartment and has characterized the allegations as a political vendetta to prevent him from running for president in 2018.
“Léo Pinheiro, who incriminated former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the case that led to his arrest, was treated with suspicion by Operation Lava Jato for almost the entire time in which he was prepared to cooperate with the investigations, according to private messages exchanged between prosecutors involved in the negotiations,” the report by Folha and The Intercept said on Sunday.
“The contractor, former president of the OAS construction company, only became creditworthy after changing his version of the Triplex apartment in Guarujá (SP) which the company claimed to have remodeled for the leftist leader.”
The leaks recall that Léo Pinheiro only submitted the version used to convict Lula in April 2017, over a year after the start of plea bargaining negotiations with Lava Jato.
The conversations examined by Folha and The Intercept help understand why the negotiations on the contractor’s plea bargain, which have still not been completed, were so stop-and-go; they suggest that the testimony on Lula and the Triplex was the main reason for the prosecutors to talk to Pinheiro again, months after they had rejected his initial proposed agreement.
In other words, Léo Pinheiro was pressured into incriminating Lula, in order to have his denunciation accepted and favor his plea bargain.