03/08/2021 16:10
Clarín.com
World
Updated 03/08/2021 19:49
A judge of the Supreme Court of Brazil, Edson Fachin,
annulled all the convictions against former president
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva for corruption and ordered the investigation to begin again in other jurisdictions due to the alleged partiality of the Prosecutor's Office and the former judge and former minister Sergio Moro.
Fachin made this decision by making room for a habeas corpus imposed by the defense of former President Lula in the framework of the causes promoted by the now questioned Operation Lava Jato.
The monochrome decision of Fachin, a judge known
for having been aligned with the complaints and cases promoted by Operation Lava Jato,
came after the scandal generated by the leak of messages that exposed what Lula and the PT always denounced: the joint work and secrecy of the prosecutors and the then judge Moro to convict the ex-president before he could compete in the last presidential elections.
Lula spent 580 days in prison in the city of Curitiba
, capital of the state of Paraná, and after being detained in the middle of an operation that was broadcast throughout the world, he had to permanently lower his candidacy.
Former Judge Moro later became the Prime Minister of Justice of the president who won those elections, current President Jair Bolsonaro.
The Lava Jato
The Lava Jato (car wash) began by chance at a gas station in Brasilia that laundered money, but as the authorities were pulling the thread of the skein, they
uncovered a complex machine of corruption of continental dimensions.
The routine investigation that began on March 17, 2014, soon turned into a gigantic scandal that hit some of the most important companies in the country, including the state oil company Petrobras and the Odebrecht empire.
Lava Jato opened Pandora's box of a
gigantic corruption network
in Brazil and its findings led to imprisonment of powerful executives and politicians from across the party arch who for decades appeared to be untouchable.
The most media arrest in the country was that of former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2010), who responds to the process in freedom after spending 1 year and 7 months behind bars at the Federal Police headquarters in Curitiba, capital of Paraná .
In the continent
The confessions of those implicated in the corruption scheme, mainly that of the executives of the Odebrecht group, had a domino effect that crossed the borders of Brazil and
shook the foundations of the system in more than a dozen Latin American countries.
The scandal, which soon came to be called the "Odebrecht case," hit presidents and former presidents of the continent accused of having participated in one of the largest bribery networks in history.
Among those investigated was the former Peruvian president Alan Garcia (1985-1990 and 2006-2011), who committed suicide in April 2019 with a gunshot to the head when he was going to be arrested for allegedly laundering assets from Odebrecht bribes.
Suspicions
In the seven years in which the operation was in force, 1,450 search warrants were carried out, 211 coercive conducts,
1,32 preventive detention orders and 163 temporary arrest warrants.
In total, more than 4,300 million reais (about 811 million dollars) were returned to the public coffers thanks to 209 collaboration agreements with some of those accused of participating in corrupt schemes.
Lava Jato, however, has not been without its criticism
.
Some of the prosecutors of the operation have been questioned for their alleged lack of impartiality in the investigations.
Suspicions arose, above all, from reports on The Intercept Brasil portal,
which published exchanges of messages between
the Lava Jato
prosecutors
and the judge in charge of these investigations in the first instance, Sergio Moro.
Those written conversations generated a huge stir and called into question the impartiality of the prosecutors, insinuating that, illegally, Moro coordinated actions in the process that led Lula to jail in one of the corruption cases.
Source: EFE, AFP and Clarín
Look also
The Lava Jato operation, which put Lula da Silva in prison, came to an end in Brazil
The unfortunate end of Lava Jato
