Judge Clears ex-President Temer in Case Linked to Joesley Batista Recording

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Judge Marcus Vinícius Reis Bastos, of the 12th Federal District Court in Brasília, on Wednesday, October 16th, dismissed charges against former President Michel Temer in a suit alleging he tried to obstruct investigations by the Public Prosecutor’s Office (MPF).

In his decision, the judge sustains that the Office of the Federal Prosecutor General (PGR), the author of the complaint, edited excerpts of an audio recording submitted as evidence and that the content does not classify as a criminal offense “not even in theory”.

Temer was indicted in 2017 by former federal prosecutor general Rodrigo Janot, based on a recording in which Temer allegedly urged JBS businessman Joesley Batista to keep payments to broker Lúcio Bologna Funaro and thereby prevent him from entering a whistleblower plea bargain agreement.

The recording was made by Joesley himself, who would come to sign a negotiated plea bargain agreement that same year.

According to Judge Bastos, the MPF transcribed passages of the expert report on the recording made by Joesley without considering interruptions and noise. In addition, he said, they deleted unintelligible speeches and added parts of the dialogue recorded separately by experts.

The expert report recorded at least six passages of interruption or of incomprehensible content at the time of the conversation in which Temer allegedly encourages payments to former mayor Eduardo Cunha when saying ” you have to keep this up, see?” They were all deleted in the transcript sent to court, as registered by the judge.

“The dialogue held by the prosecution as consubstantiation of the crime of obstruction of justice, as is demonstrated, is not, even in theory, a criminal offense. Its content, contrary to what the indictment points out, does not allow us to conclude that the defendant was encouraging Joesley Batista to make payments to Lúcio Funaro,” wrote Bastos.

“Monosyllabic statements, disjointed, captured in conversation with numerous interruptions, I repeat, are not sufficient to support the conclusions contained in the indictment,” continued the magistrate.

The decision in the case was by summary judgment, when, without considering the merits, the court considered the complaint and supporting matter to offer insufficient grounds for the case to continue.

The initial indictment lodged with the Federal Supreme Court was sent to the 12th Circuit Court after Temer left office as president.

Source: Folhapress