Lula’s Defense Submits Plea to STF, Based on Suspicion of Lava Jato Prosecutors

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – On Monday evening, August 12th, former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva‘s counsel petitioned the Federal Supreme Court (STF) for a writ of suspicion against Lava Jato’s coordinator, Deltan Dallagnol, and the other task force prosecutors in Curitiba who acted in the Guarujá Triplex case, which led to the leftist’s arrest.

The petition reaches the Court at a time when the justices’ discontent over Dallagnol’s performance is mounting, and there is an ongoing attempt to remove the prosecutor from command of the operation.

The habeas corpus, seeking Lula’s freedom, is to be examined by the Court’s Second Panel, where a petition for a plea of suspicion of former judge Sérgio Moro is also being processed. The former president’s lawyers have also requested Justice Alexandre de Moraes to share the material seized by the Federal Police under Operation Spoofing.

On August 1st, the STF Justice ordered that messages seized from the suspects of hacking into officials’ cell phones, such as Justice Minister Sérgio Moro, be forwarded to the Federal Supreme Court.

In the habeas corpus petition filed with the court, Lula’s lawyers claim that messages disclosed by The Intercept Brasil, and examined by Folha de S.Paulo, point to “personal and political motivation” of Lava Jato’s prosecutors and render “even more blatant the breach of the principle of legal due process” in the former president’s case.

Defense counsel claim that Sérgio Moro’s conversations with Deltan demonstrate “the existence of a previous arrangement between judge and prosecutors” and the “precedence that the then judge had over the measures exclusively attributed to the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office.”

According to the lawyers, “to close our eyes to the truth” and qualify the prosecutors’ actions as “mere excesses” is to allow what is termed “the true ‘anything goes’ in the exercise of prosecutorial power” and to allow the Federal Prosecutors’ office to encourage “a moral lynching of the defendant.”

On Tuesday, August 13th, Dallagnol had a setback in the CNMP (National Council of the Federal Prosecutor’s Office). At the request of two counselors, a proceeding against the prosecutor, brought to the body due to the Telegram messages published on The Intercept Brasil website, was reinstated and will again be processed. However, there is no set time for its judgment by the court.

Magistrate Orlando Rochadel had individually decided to dismiss the complaint against Dallagnol on the grounds that the messages’ authenticity had not been proven.

Within the scope of the Federal Prosecutor’s Office, Deltan’s eventual dismissal from Lava Jato may only occur upon decisions of two panels, by majority vote. The Superior Council of the Federal Prosecutor’s Office is one of them, in the case of members indicted or charged in disciplinary proceedings. On June 13th, Lula’s lawyers had already lodged a petition with the STF, based on The Intercept’s series of reports.

Lula’s lawyers claimed that Moro’s conversations with prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol exposed the former Lava Jato judge’s “complete disregard for impartiality.”