By Bianca Oliveira
SAO PAULO – “A person only becomes guilty through a lawsuit that reaches that result. If the judicial process was declared null, by logical definition this person is innocent”, explains Professor Rogério Arantes, department of political science of the University of São Paulo (USP), about the situation of former President Lula after the decision of the Minister of the Supreme Court (STF), Edson Fachin, to annul all convictions handed down against Lula by the Federal Court of Curitiba , responsible for Lava Jato.
In the decision, Fachin affirms that the Curitiba task force should not be responsible for the cases that led Lula to prison in 2018 and determines that they be restarted by the Federal District Justice. The question of the impartiality of Judge Sérgio Moro was also pointed out as a reason for annulment of the process by the defense of the former president. The Supreme Court, which has postponed Moro’s judgment since December 2018, started voting on the matter on Tuesday (9).
“This is happening in a context where recorded conversations between prosecutors, federal judges and investigators, most recently disclosed, reveal that it was a political operation, in the sense that the ends were placed in front of the means.They shared decisions that, in the light of the penal code, should be taken independently so that criminal proceedings could take place in the most impartial and legitimate way possible. When they did this, they derailed the former president’s right of defense and that’s why Lava Jato is undergoing this profound review,” Arantes said.
Due to the conviction, Lula could not run for the 2018 elections, when he was leading the polls of voting intentions in the country against the current president, Jair Bolsonaro. In a statement, Lula’s defense claimed that “The decision is in line with everything we have sustained for more than 5 years in the conduct of proceedings. But it does not have the power to repair the irremediable damage caused by former judge Sergio Moro and the prosecutors of the “lava jato” to former President Lula,