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The Second Chamber of the Supreme Court (Federal Supreme Court) decided today (8) to transfer the investigation against former emedebista senators Romero Jucá (RR) and Valdir Raupp (RO) for corruption and money laundering in Transpetro, a Petrobras subsidiary, to Federal Justice in Brasilia.
The virtual trial was another that ended tied in the absence of Dean Celso de Mello, who is recovering from an operation and did not participate in the session due to his medical license. By the rule in force in the Court, the tie favors the accused or accused.
Ministers Edson Fachin, rapporteur of the case, and Cármen Lúcia understood that it would correspond to the 13th Federal Court of Curitiba, responsible for the processes resulting from Operation Lava Jato, to process the charges. They ended up defeated by Gilmar Mendes and Ricardo Lewandowski, who voted for the jurisdiction of the Federal Court of Brasilia to try the case.
Author of the winning vote, Gilmar pointed out that the crimes investigated are related to Transpetro and not to Petrobras, the area of Lava Jato’s original investigation. The minister also argued that the alleged illicit acts attributed to former senators did not occur in Paraná, but in the Federal District.
The result responds to the requests presented by the defenses of former parliamentarians. The lawyers filed appeals arguing precisely that the alleged crimes denounced are not related to the investigations of the Curitiba working group and accusing the Federal Public Ministry of attempting to transform the ‘Palo de Lava Jato’ into the “sole and exclusive trial of authorities, businessmen and collaborators “.
The transfer represents one more defeat for the Paraná prosecutors. The trial was full of strikes at Lava Jato. Lewandowski said the “13th Vara de Curitiba has become a sink for stocks.” According to the minister, it is necessary “to put a little order with respect to this jurisdiction, which many times (?) Exceeds the beautiful (limits) to the reasonable”.
“Everything that was, even remotely, related to a crime in relation to the public purse was transferred to that Vara, the 13th Federal Court of Justice in operation,” said Lewandowski. “The time has come for us to separate the wheat from the chaff with respect to a certain jurisdiction of judges and judges.”
Gilmar Mendes, for his part, said that “no judicial body can present itself as a universal judge of each and every one of the crimes related to the diversion of funds for the purposes of political parties, despite the competition rules.” According to the minister, it is necessary to observe the guarantee that each person is tried by the competent judge, the person in charge of the jurisdiction where the crime was committed.
“The jurisdiction cannot be defined based on a thematic and agglutinating criterion of cases randomly assigned by the prosecution and trial bodies, as if everything were part of the same context, regardless of the peculiarities of each situation,” argued the minister.
The entire investigation was in charge of the Federal Supreme Court and the decision to send the case to Paraná had been taken by the rapporteur, Edson Fachin, after Jucá and Raupp finished their terms in the Senate at the beginning of the year. In May, they became defendants following a decision by Judge Luiz Antônio Bonat, of the 13th Federal Court of Paraná.
The investigation indicated the payment of bribes by the companies to the BMD members responsible for the appointment and maintenance of Sérgio Machado as president of Transpetro. In return, Machado guaranteed NM Engenharia and Odebrecht Ambiental to maintain current contracts and would facilitate future tenders. According to a complaint from the Federal Public Ministry, NM Engenharia paid R $ 1.3 million in bribes to Jucá and other WB politicians, in the form of electoral donations. Also according to the indictment, Raupp received R $ 1 million from Odebrecht Ambiental through two donations from a group company.
Valdir Raupp’s defense reports that the 2nd Panel of the Federal Supreme Court resolved, today, the correction of addresses and the referral of the processes related to TRANSPETRO to the Judicial Section of the Federal District. The decision respected the legal norms of jurisdiction, preventing the Court of the 13th Federal Court of Curitiba from maintaining universal jurisdiction and the illegal concentration of cases, despite the current criminal justice system.
