RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – On Tuesday, August 7th, Petrobras sent a letter to the Brazilian Bar Association’s (OAB) President, Felipe Santa Cruz, in which it announces that it is terminating the contract it had with his law firm to represent it in labor law disputes. This information is from Folha de S.Paulo.
“There is clearly an ongoing political persecution,” says the lawyer, who said he would bring an action for damages.
Last year, the Santa Cruz office won a case worth an estimated R$5 billion (US$1.3 billion) that would have had to be paid for late night overtime to employees on board the state-owned oil platforms.
The judgment, in the Superior Labor Court (TST), was narrow: six votes in favor and five against. “It was a termination action, something like resurrecting someone from the dead. I saved the company in the most severe labor cause it has ever faced,” says Santa Cruz.
Arm-wrestling
The measure perpetuates the disputes between Bolsonaro’s government and the Bar Association. On July 29th, when condemning the institution’s stance on the investigation of Adélio Bispo, the perpetrator of the knife attack during the electoral campaign, the president said he could explain to Felipe Santa Cruz the circumstances of the death of his father, Fernando Augusto Santa Cruz de Oliveira, missing during the military dictatorship.
“Why did the OAB prevent the Federal Police from accessing the phone of one his [Adelio’s] very dear lawyers? What is the OAB’s intention? Who is this OAB? One day, if the president of the OAB would like to know how his father disappeared during the military period, I’ll tell him. He will not want to hear the truth,” the president said.
Soon after, Bolsonaro said live on Facebook, Santa Cruz is “mistaken” about the death of his father and claimed that he had not been killed by the military, as advocated by the lawyer.
Killed by his own group
While getting a haircut during the live broadcast, the head of the federal executive maintained that it was the group of militants of which Fernando Santa Cruz was part in Recife, the “Ação Popular Marxista-Leninista” (Marxist-Leninist Popular Action), that executed the father of the OAB’s current president.
Felipe Santa Cruz has decided to challenge Bolsonaro before the Federal Supreme Court (STF) regarding the statements.