In a new twist in the cause that kept regional politics in suspense, the Supreme Court of Brazil declared this Tuesday “absolute nullity” of all the judicial acts carried out during the Lava Jato anti-corruption operation against Marcelo Odebrecht, former president of the construction giant. However, he continues to sign his plea agreement.
Through a release, The Supreme Federal Court announced that the court judge José Antonio Dias Toffoli evaluated that The officials who participated in Lava Jato ignored “due process” in order to “guarantee his personal and political objectives,” according to the decision.
“I declare the absolute nullity of all acts carried out to the detriment of the plaintiff in the scope of the procedures linked to Operation Lava Jato,” the magistrate wrote.
The decision undoes the actions against Marcelo Odebrecht by former federal judge Sergio Morowho from his court in Curitiba (south) commanded that anti-corruption operation that revealed a gigantic network of bribes paid by large construction companies to politicians to obtain contracts in the Brazilian state oil company Petrobras.
The reasons why the Supreme Federal Court annulled the judicial process against Marcelo Odebrecht
Judge Toffoli made the decision to declare the “absolute” nullity of the judicial acts when granting a request from the lawyers of Marcelo Odebrecht, who argued that The businessman’s case was similar to that of other executives whose trials were annulled due to irregularities.
In his decision, the judge states that “before the content of the frequent dialogues” between Moro and the Lava Jato prosecutor “specifically” about the businessman and the companies he presided over, “the mixing the function of accusation with that of judgingeroding the foundations of the democratic criminal process”.
Toffoli stressed, however, that The nullity does not include the collaboration agreement signed by Marcelo Odebrecht during the investigation, through which he pleaded guilty and agreed to collaborate with Justice to denounce other alleged parties involved.
Twists in the Lava Jato case: from the political shock to the annulment of processes
Odebrecht was the company most investigated by Lava Jato, that led to prison dozens of members of Brazil’s political and business eliteamong them Marcelo Odebrecht, former president of the construction company founded in 1944 in the northeastern state of Bahia by his grandfather Norberto Odebrecht.
The businessman was arrested in June 2015 and sentenced to more than 19 years in prison. The sentence was reduced to 10 years after collaborating with justice and since December 2017 he served house arrest. In 2022 he was reduced again to seven years, already served.
The Odebrecht case involved politicians and officials from 12 Latin American countries – including presidents and former presidents – who received hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes in exchange for public contracts on the continent.
This is the third decision that reverses what was decided by Lava Jato. In January, Toffoli suspended the payment of fines equivalent to 1.7 billion dollars imposed on Odebrecht for his responsibility in that corruption scheme.
A few months before, In September 2023, it annulled evidence from the confessions of Odebrecht executives that resulted from a collaboration agreement. The Supreme Court of Justice of Brazil ruled at the request of the president’s defense Lula da Silva that all the evidence of the collaboration agreement with the company Odebrecht, due to the Lava Jatowere obtained illegally by the former judge Sergio Moro.
At the same time, the highest court defined that the prison sentence against the president, who was imprisoned for 580 days, was a “historical error.” The ruling was recorded by the judge Antonio Dias Toffoli, who indicated that the alleged confessions are part of illegal devices of “psychological torture” that had the objective, among others, of obtaining false evidence against innocent people, while at the same time describing as “something armed” the prison sentence that outlawed Lula of the 2018 elections.
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Argentine News.
Reversal with the denunciations awarded in the Lava Jato case
The agreement between Federal Public Ministry and Odebrecht was signed in December 2016 and ratifiedin the area of Lava Jato, in May 2017around then Moro judge.
The denunciation agreements awarded to Odebrecht signed within the framework of Lava Jato in 2017 must now return to judges of the first instance to be reviewed, since the judge Toffoli He considered that there was no adequate procedure and compared what happened to the torture that the military dictatorship carried out against political prisoners.
The judge stated that the public agents “used real psychological torture to obtain evidence against innocent people” and that they acted with bias and outside their sphere of competence.
Source: Ambito
