RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Federal Supreme Court Justice (STF), Gilmar Mendes, declared in an interview on Monday, August 2nd, for CBN radio that the task force of Lava Jato created a “parallel state that was part of a power project”.
“There is a saying that a trapeze artist dies when he thinks he can fly,” the Justice said. “And I think the trapeze artists here thought they were flying”.
Gilmar Mendes supports the investigations conducted by The Intercept Brasil and criticized the conduct of members of Lava Jato and Minister Sergio Moro, the former judge responsible for the operation’s proceedings in Curitiba.
For him, “the fight against crime cannot be done by committing another crime” and that “we need to be very careful with rationalizations and vigilantes”.
“It is necessary to separate hacking, a crime that deserves punishment, from the content of [leaked] messages,” he said. “And I think this is a common judgment where the control bodies have failed. This has to be analyzed, even for future learning”.
Lula’s personal problems
The minister also spoke about the report released last week by UOL in partnership with The Intercept Brasil that Lava Jato prosecutors mocked the mourning of former president Lula.
“It is interesting that someone observed that the population was very touched by the burials of Lula’s family, and the lack of moral sensitivity of the prosecutors,” he said.
“Because the population understands this, and maybe they don’t understand the legal debate, which is behind all these things, but what they understand, they repudiate. They know what it’s like to bury a relative, to bury a grandson. And making a joke about it shows a very serious lack of moral sensitivity”.
The leaked dialogues show that prosecutors denied Lula’s request to go to the funeral of his brother, Genival Inácio da Silva, Vavá, last January when the former president was already in prison and that they feared political demonstrations in favor of Lula.
At the time, some members of Lava Jato said they believed that Lula’s militant sympathizers could try to prevent him from returning to the Federal Police headquarters in Curitiba.