The Brazilian Justice condemns a former Lava Jato prosecutor to compensate Lula for moral damages

MADRID, March 23. (EUROPE PRESS) –

The Superior Court of Justice (TSJ) of Brazil has sentenced the former prosecutor of Lava Jato, Deltan Dallagnol, to compensate former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva with 75,000 reais (about 14,000 euros) for moral damages when comparing him in 2016 with the head of a criminal organization.

For the court, Dallagnol “exceeded his functions by using adjectives that discredited Lula’s honor and image”, when during a press conference in 2016 he used a PowerPoint presentation to place the former president at the forefront of a corruption plot to divert funds from Petrobras.

Dallagnol referred to Lula as “master” and “commander” of this corrupt plot, accusing him of a series of facts that did not appear in the complaint that he broke down during that press conference, says the TSJ statement.

The investigator of the case, Judge Luis Felipe Salomão, has pointed out that the “spectacularization” of that episode is not only “not compatible with the seriousness that an investigation requires”, but also that Dallagnol deviated from the law when he described Lula as way.

That presentation was related to the case of the Guarujá triplex for which Lula was convicted of corruption and money laundering, which was finally archived in May 2022 after the partiality that his former instructor showed during the process was shown. the former judge Sergio Moro, ultimately the president’s first justice minister, Jair Bolsonaro.

That case – annulled a year earlier by the Brazilian Supreme Court due to Moro’s malpractice – assured that former President Lula would have allowed himself to be corrupted by the OAS construction company in exchange for a series of public contracts through the state-owned Petrobras, according to the statement of the former president of this company, Léo Pinheiro, who is serving house arrest.

Moro’s proximity to the prosecutors of the ‘Lava Jato’ special team could be read in a series of messages leaked to the Brazilian press that were fundamental for the majority of the judges of the Supreme Court to rule in favor of Lula and consider that the former judge he would not have acted impartially.

At the beginning of March of last year, Supreme Court Judge Edson Fachin annulled the sentence of twelve years and one month in prison for corruption and money laundering against Lula issued by a court in Curitiba, considering that he did not have the authority to do so and that He was to be retried in federal court.

Thanks to this, the former president resumed his political rights and total freedom to present himself as a hypothetical candidate for the presidential elections that will take place this year and in which, according to the polls, he is the top favorite.

It should be remembered that when Lula entered prison on April 7, 2018, it also meant his disqualification as a candidate when he was the favorite in the polls for the presidential elections on October 7 of that year, in which Bolsonaro finally won, who appointed Moro as Minister of Justice.