Brazilian Senator Sérgio Moro, during a session in the Senate, in Brasilia, this Wednesday. ADRIANO MACHADO (REUTERS)
The judge who took Lula da Silva to jail and top star of the Lava Jato anti-corruption macro-operation, Sérgio Moro, was about to be assassinated by the First Command of the Capital (PCC), the most powerful faction of drug traffickers in South America.
This is what a police investigation that came to light this Wednesday points out and that for the moment nine people have been arrested, the majority of them in the state of São Paulo.
Among the targets of the drug traffickers were also prosecutor Lincoln Gakiya, who has been investigating the gang since the early 2000s and has lived for more than a decade with a 24-hour police escort due to the constant death threats he receives.
Also in the crosshairs were heads of the prison system in several states.
A demolished house in São Paulo with a PCC inscription on one of its walls. Nelson Antoine (AP)
According to the investigation, the drug traffickers planned homicides and extortion through kidnapping, which could occur at the same time in five Brazilian states.
They sought to create commotion on a national scale.
It would be a way of negotiating the release of Marcola, the top leader of the PCC, who still governs in the shadows from prison.
In 2019, when Moro was still Minister of Public Security under Jair Bolsonaro, the federal government and the São Paulo state government agreed to transfer Marcola and 21 other PCC members to maximum security prisons.
The transfer request came from Gakiya, whose team discovered a plan by the faction to rescue several leaders detained in a prison in Presidente Venceslau, in the interior of São Paulo.
The drug traffickers watched Moro and his family continuously in Curitiba, the city where he lived until he moved to Brasilia a few months ago to make his debut as a senator.
At least ten people took turns following his steps and knowing his routine inside out.
They rented houses and even an office next to the addresses that he used to frequent.
According to the police leadership, other authorities were also being monitored by the PCC practically in real time.
At a press conference, the Minister of Justice and Public Security, Flávio Dino, explained that he mobilized the director of the Federal Police after the president of the Senate, Rodrigo Pacheco, alerted him to signs of attacks on authorities, including Senator Moro. .
The Special Action Group to Combat Organized Crime (Gaeco) led by Gakiya in São Paulo had also alerted the police and Moro himself and his wife, Rosângela Moro (elected federal deputy) already in January.
Since then the two saw their personal security reinforced.
File image of PCC weapons, seized by São Paulo police in 2006.JONNE RORIZ (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Moro thanked the police for their work on Twitter, but left his version of events for a pronouncement from the Senate rostrum, to give it a more solemn tone.
The dismantling of the plans to kill him returned him to the front pages of the news after a stage in low hours.
Although he managed to be elected senator, the popularity he achieved years ago in the face of Operation Car Wash, which led to his signing as Bolsonaro's minister and an abrupt presidential candidacy that did not prosper due to lack of political support, remains far behind.
His newly released career as a senator is not being easy either.
Bolsonaro's party appealed to the courts to have his mandate annulled in order to benefit the defeated candidate, and in his own party, União Brasil, they make a vacuum for him.
The 'timing' of the police operation also plays in Moro's favour, since a few hours earlier Lula had said in an interview that during his time in jail when visitors asked him if he was okay he would answer that he would only be okay when he "fucked up". to More.
The then judge sentenced him in the first instance to nine years and six months in prison for crimes of passive corruption and money laundering and became his number one public enemy and the black beast of the left.
After the police operation, social networks were abuzz with comments linking Lula's thirst for revenge with the plans of the PCC.
The Minister of Justice deeply regretted it: "I am frightened by the level of shamelessness of those who try to politicize a serious investigation,
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