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Despite the recent friction between the Attorney General, Augusto Aras, and the Lava Jato working groups, the stampede of the prosecutors of the operation in São Paulo occurred due to an internal conflict of the Federal Public Ministry in the state.
The eight prosecutors who work on cases related to the operation say that a colleague has harmed the group’s work, even without being part of the working group. For this reason, they requested a letter on Tuesday (1) to disconnect from Lava Jato.
The decision was not made on impulse, but was considered in recent weeks. With the collective resignation, they try to open the possibility that the investigations are out of the reach of this prosecutor and that, eventually, members of the current group can resume them later.
In a letter sent to the Superior Council of the Federal Public Ministry, Lava Jato from São Paulo makes it clear that it is “at the service of a possible new format – not marked by the problems now exposed – that will allow the work that had been carried out until then to continue.”
“At the end of the day, the working group still had a lot to produce, in research fronts of enormous importance, involving, for example, corruption in large works (such as in several lines of the São Paulo Metro and in the southern sections and Norte del Rodoanel), sectors of the financial system and millionaire money laundering schemes, both in Brazil and abroad ”, they said.
The “problems now exposed” are the friction with Viviane de Oliveira Martínez, who passed an internal contest in March and took charge of the sector responsible for the investigations of Lava Jato (called Office 5), previously occupied by the former coordinator of operations Anamara Osório, who was promoted to Brasilia last year.
Unlike other heads of sectors of the Federal Public Ministry who play Lava Jato, such as Eduardo El Hage in Rio and until last week of Deltan Dallagnol in Curitiba, Viviane did not want to be the coordinator of the working group – and don’t even be part of the team.
However, when he took office, he took responsibility for the investigations, although he did not act directly on them.
The task force says it took over Office 5 in March on the grounds that it would continue working on its other cases and that it was not interested in knowing what lines of investigation the operation took.
According to the group, she did not attend hearings, meetings with lawyers, Federal Police delegates and complainants.
However, despite this initial autonomy granted to the eight members to carry out all the actions of the operation, in the following months, says the working group, Viviane began to interfere in the work.
According to them, even without consulting the members of Lava Jato, Viviane began to withdraw the investigations of the 5th Office and send them to be drawn within the criminal area of the Federal Public Ministry.
Viviane’s first public discontent with the task force occurred in May, when she sent a letter to the PGR questioning the volume of Lava Jato investigations being sent to the sector.
“To FTLJ-SP [força-tarefa], if you are still linked to the V Criminal Office of the PRSP [Procuradoria da República], it will make the collection grow in a geometric progression and, considering that it also accumulates the normal collection of the PRSP distribution, in a short time my performance will be unfeasible, “said the prosecutor.
“I am personally responsible for the work of eight other colleagues, whose work rhythm is difficult to follow, a difficulty that is compounded by the level of confidentiality imposed on their performance,” said Viviane.
The culmination of the problems, they say, was when Viviane tried to delay the investigation that culminated in Operation Flight, on July 3, against the former governor and current senator José Serra (PSDB-SP), pending the creation of Unac (National Anticorruption Unit, model that would link the working groups with the PGR).
“Attorney Viviane considered it reasonable to publish the protocol of investigation requests pertinent to a major operation for almost two months (…) just pending (…) a decision from the institution’s senior management to prevent this event occurs. be your responsibility, ”the working group said.
The friction led to the cut off of all communication in the last month between the task force and Viviane. Now, with the announcement of the departure of the eight Lava Jato prosecutors, internally some possibilities for the destination of the investigations have been discussed.
The first would be that there was an exchange – called “barter” – between Viviane and a prosecutor in charge of another office.
It would be a similar process to what happened with Deltan Dallagnol and Alessandro Oliveira, the new coordinator of Lava Jato in Curitiba. In São Paulo, this was tried, but without success.
The second possibility would be for the Department of Internal Affairs of the Federal Public Ministry to determine the redistribution of the main Lava Jato investigations to another office. With that, the members of the current working group could be invited to resume work in this new sector.
There is also the hypothesis that Viviane herself proposes the creation of a new working group, with other members, after the current ones leave.
On Thursday (3), the deputy attorney general of the Republic, Humberto Jacques de Medeiros, asked Viviane, head of the MPF-SP and the department of internal affairs, to take measures to avoid the discontinuity of work, “even due to the risk of prescription, which is permanent in criminal matters ”.
Despite the stampede by prosecutors, a complaint against Paulo Vieira de Souza, suspected of being a PSDB operator known as Paulo Preto, released on Thursday (3) had Viviane’s signature.
The report sought out Viviane Martínez for comment on the references made to her by the Lava Jato working group, but she did not respond.
Marcelo Rocha, from Brasilia, collaborated
