RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – As the deadline approaches for presenting his opinion on the indictments approved by the Covid Parliamentary Inquiry Committee (CPI), Federal Prosecutor General Augusto Aras forwarded a document to the STF recommended 10 measures that should be analyzed based on the final report.
The secrecy of the case prevents knowing the content of the measures requested by the Prosecutor General’s Office (PGR). The rapporteurs of the cases are Justices Rosa Weber and Ricardo Lewandowski – both of whom have yet to comment on the case.
The G7 senators – the majority group in the CPI – delivered the report to Aras on October 27, one day after the completion of the committee’s work. The 30-day countdown established by law for the Prosecutor General to file charges, or dismiss the accusations against officials with special privileges, such as President Jair Bolsonaro, began from that moment.
Aras has been pressured by senators for an opinion. On Tuesday, November 23, the Senate Human Rights Commission approved a request to invite the Prosecutor General to explain the steps taken thus far. In a note, he announced that he would present his position on the CPI report this Saturday, October 27, one month after receiving the document.
On October 28, the Prosecutor General ordered the opening of a preliminary investigation, through the so-called notice of fact, to investigate the crimes imputed by the Covid CPI to the President and the other 12 politicians named in the final report authored by Senator Renan Calheiros.
Fourteen days after the symbolic delivery of the CPI report to Aras, on November 10, the PGR announced that it had only received “confidential documents compiled or produced by the Parliamentary Inquiry Committee” the day before. If the date of full receipt of the information is considered, the Prosecutor General would still have another 14 days to examine the allegations. There is no indication that the body will choose to pronounce itself at a later date.
According to the PGR, “the time lapse” between the delivery of the report and the receipt of the records occurred due to “operational issues arising from the volume of the material (approximately 4 terabytes)” and the “need to comply with institutional protocols that aim to ensure chain of custody, crucial to the legal validity of the information.”