Leaks Show That Lava Jato’s Dallagnol Encouraged Secret Attack on STF’s Toffoli

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – New dialogues obtained by The Intercept Brasil website and disclosed by the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo on Thursday, August 1st, 2019, show that prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol may have encouraged his fellow prosecutors secretly to investigate Dias Toffoli, Presiding Justice of the Federal Supreme Court (STF).

According to the newspaper, the justice was seen as beginning to suggest that he could halt the proceedings of Operation Lava Jato.

Dallagnol, the coordinator of the Lava Jato task force in Curitiba, allegedly looked for information on the finances of Toffoli and his wife, including from the Federal Revenue Service, in order to uncover evidence that would link the family to contractors investigated for corruption cases in Petrobras.

The prosecutor inquired of his colleagues. “Gentlemen, did the OAS raise the issue of Toffoli’s apartment?”  Prosecutor Sérgio Bruno Cabral Fernandes answered: “Not that I know of. We must see how to approach this issue, with caution.”

In July 2016, OAS representatives were negotiating a leniency agreement with the task force. The lawyers told the prosecutors that the contractor had engaged in a renovation of the STF justice’s apartment.

The case aroused the prosecutors’ interest, although former OAS president Léo Pinheiro said there had been no irregularities in the matter.

Two weeks later, Dallagnol is said to have sought Eduardo Pelella, chief of staff of federal prosecutor-general, Rodrigo Janot. He was trying to relay information that portrayed Toffoli as a partner to a cousin in a hotel in Paraná. “I wanted to look into intelligence data to possibly provide you with them,” he said.

On another occasion, the coordinator of the Curitiba task force allegedly asked Janot’s advisor if he was able to retrieve the address of Toffoli’ renovated apartment. This information was provided a few days later.

Investigations

The fact that Toffoli had decided to pursue investigations into Eletronuclear bothered the prosecutors. Additionally he had ordered that former minister Paulo Bernardo be released after his arrest by Lava Jato in São Paulo.

The following month, in August, Veja magazine published a report on the renovation of Toffoli’s apartment and cited Léo Pinheiro’s denunciation. However, the whistleblower had not provided any evidence on the matter.

The leak caused uneasiness in the STF, and the Office of the Prosecutor General (PGR) interrupted negotiations with OAS. The matter supposedly caused divisions among the prosecutors themselves. Some defended the measure. “When it reached the judiciary, they shut it down,” Dallagnol complained.

Prosecutor Carlos Fernando had commented that the federal public prosecutors should only “act in respect to the STF if they have solid evidence.”

Defense

After the report was published, Justice Gilmar Mendes defended Tofolli and accused Lava Jato’s prosecutors of being liable for the leak, in addition to categorizing the case as an abuse of authority.

There was also a suspicion that, in addition to Toffoli’s wife, Gilmar Mendes’s wife had been investigated. Dallagnol had also spoken to prosecutor Orlando Martello about this. The reason for this was the suspicion that the Justice’s wife’s law office had defended Queiroz Galvão at the Federal Audit Court (TCU).

According to the report, Toffoli was not the task force’s only target. Dallagnol supposedly used the OAS accusation in an attempt to block the appointment of STJ judge Humberto Martins to the STF position of Teori Zavascki, who died in 2017.

In response, the Lava Jato task force stated that it was its duty to forward to the PGR any information on officials entitled to a special forum, since prosecutors may not investigate Supreme Court justices. “It is common for information to be exchanged in order to preliminarily examine alleged facts of which the Federal Prosecutor’s Office is aware,” the task force said in a statement to the newspaper.

The members of the Federal Prosecutor’s Office sought by the report did not wish to comment on the case.