RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva‘s defense counsel said the new leaks on Lava Jato published by Folha de S.Paulo in partnership with The Intercept Brasil “expose the gross illegalities committed by former judge Sérgio Moro and the Lava Jato prosecutors against former President Lula, his lawyers, and also against the Federal Supreme Court“.
In 2016, Moro unveiled a conversation between then-president Dilma Rousseff and Lula, in which she suggested to swear in Lula as Presidential Chief of Staff. He was under investigation by Lava Jato.
The recording suggested that Lula’s appointment as Chief of Staff was designed to halt the investigations against the leftist by transferring the case from Curitiba to the Federal Supreme Court (STF).
New recordings obtained by Folha show that other calls were intercepted by the task force on that same day. In these conversations, the former president allegedly expressed concern over accepting the position.
According to the former president’s counsel, the new leaks show that Moro and the prosecutors “selected telephone conversations held by Lula, hiding from the case record and the Federal Supreme Court those that made it clear that the former president accepted the position of Chief of Staff to help the government and the country and not for any other purpose linked to Lava Jato’s investigations”.
Lava Jato’s prosecutors, the statement added, “were fully aware of the illegality that they were perpetrating by disclosing telephone conversations, including those captured after the judicial decision that ordered the interruption of these interceptions, but still decided to carry out this action, together with former judge Sérgio Moro, to achieve political and extraneous results in the case”.
The statement further mentions that the conversation between lawyer Cristiano Zanin Martins and Lula, in March 2016 and recorded by the investigation “reiterates that former President Lula had no intention of accepting the position of Chief of Staff and much less of thwarting any of the Lava Jato investigations”.