Brazil’s Flávio Bolsonaro will only be investigated if Prosecutor’s Office files new complaint

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The investigations into Senator Flávio Bolsonaro for the “splitting” kickback case will only be resumed if the Prosecutor’s Office files a new complaint. The decision was made by Judge João Otávio de Noronha of the Federal Superior Court (STJ).

The magistrate granted the petition by defense counsel for Fabrício Queiroz, former aide to Flávio Bolsonaro when he was a state deputy in Rio de Janeiro. Queiroz was singled out by the Rio de Janeiro Prosecutor’s Office (MPRJ) as the alleged operator of the “rachadinha” scheme.

On November 9, the 5th Panel of the Superior Court of Justice (STJ) overturned the investigation into the case against the senator. By 4 votes to 1, the panel disagreed with rapporteur Justice Felix Fischer’s vote and held that the federal district court did not have jurisdiction.

In the proceeding, the son of President Jair Bolsonaro is accused of receiving kickbacks of the salaries of employees in his cabinet at the Legislative Assembly of Rio de Janeiro (ALERJ), when he was a state deputy.

The judges analyzed the senator’s defense and accepted it by majority vote, rejecting the rapporteur’s vote. Thus, the sentences handed down and the evidence collected in the case by federal Judge Flávio Itabaiana, of the 27th Criminal Court of Rio de Janeiro, were overturned.

These were precautionary measures used to collect evidence in the case against the senator, when he was still a state deputy. In March, the 5th panel of the STJ had rejected the defense’s request to overturn all of the Judge’s decisions in the case. The jurisdictional question is still under consideration by the Federal Supreme Court (STF).

LEGAL PRIVILEGE

Flávio Bolsonaro’s defense argued that because he had ceased to be a state deputy to become a senator, the investigation could not have been conducted by federal lower court judge Itabaiana, but only by the State Court of Appeals. The senator claims he is innocent.

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