SÃO PAULO, SP (FOLHAPRESS) – The now annulled Lava Jato cases against former minister José Dirceu have even had property auctions confiscated to ensure reimbursement to public coffers.
An apartment and a house in São Paulo and a truck have already been auctioned by court order. The information appears in the records of the Federal Court of Paraná.
On Monday (28), Minister Gilmar Mendes, of the STF (Federal Supreme Court), annulled the process against the former minister, extending to both cases the understanding that the then judge Sergio Moro was not impartial when judging the actions against the president Lula. .
With the measure, Dirceu recovered his political rights and can run again. The PGR, however, can still appeal Gilmar’s decision.
The sold apartment, located in Jardins, was in the name of the company TGS Consultoria, registered in the name of a former partner of the former minister, Júlio Cesar dos Santos, also convicted in the case. The house, according to the documents, belonged to a daughter of Dirceu.
The legislation allows the so-called early disposal of assets. This procedure is usually carried out before the defendant’s appeals against the conviction have been exhausted and occurs in cases, for example, where the property subject to court may rapidly lose value if the defendant has no way to cover his maintenance costs.
In the case of Dirceu, the holding of the auctions was ordered at the time when Moro, today a senator for União Brasil-PR, was the judge responsible for the processes, in 2018.
The blockage of assets had occurred when the former minister was arrested in Lava Jato, in a phase that began in August 2015.
Moro said that, with advance sales, the amounts would be deposited in the courts, pending the completion of the process. “If the conviction is confirmed, it will be returned to the victim, in this case the looted coffers of Petrobras,” he wrote.
In case of acquittal, he added, the accused would be reinstated, which should happen now, with the annulment of the case by the STF.
In the 2016 ruling, the then judge stated that the bribe received by Dirceu’s group was calculated at R$ 15 million in values at the time.
Together, the three assets auctioned raised a total of R$ 948,000. The most recent sale took place in late 2022.
Other properties were also auctioned, but did not sell. One of them is a property in the south of São Paulo valued at R$ 7.2 million. Another is a farm in Vinhedo (SP), with an estimated value of R$ 1.2 million.
In a ruling this month, federal judge Guilherme Roman Borges suspended further sales attempts after the former minister’s defense said they had reached an agreement to pay old debts on the properties.
Dirceu always questioned the auction initiative. “The products arrived much earlier. [ao processo]They were even family assets. It was not about the legality of the purchase,” says lawyer Roberto Podval.
The main case against Dirceu has already been processed at three levels of the Judiciary, with the conviction also confirmed in the STJ (Superior Court of Justice). The former minister would still have the possibility of appealing to the STF before the appeals end.
He was convicted by Moro for the crimes of corruption, money laundering and criminal organization.
According to the former magistrate’s ruling, the former minister received bribes from the construction company Engevix through an intermediary, who simulated consulting contracts to justify the transfers.
Dirceu was imprisoned in Paraná for three periods, for around two years and four months, from 2015 to 2019.
He has always denied the accusations of Lava Jato prosecutors. In the process he stated that there were no elements of conviction and that at that time he was acting as a consultant, arguing that his company effectively provided services to Engevix to open markets in Peru.
Following Gilmar Mendes’ decision this week, Dirceu stated that the Supreme Court “did justice.” “Because if we remember, in that famous PowerPoint there is only one name besides Lula’s name, mine. And the objective of all my convictions, before the investigations and trials, was the denunciation of Lula, and Vaza Jato leaves it very of course,” he said. GlobeNews.
In his decision, the Supreme Court minister stated that a set of evidence collected especially from messages exchanged between prosecutors Moro and Lava Jato show that the “same lack of exemption” in relation to Lula also prevented Dirceu from “having the right to a judgment”. fair and impartial.”
“The brotherhood formed by former judge Sergio Moro and the Curitiba prosecutors saw Dirceu’s conviction as an objective to be achieved to support the accusations that would later be presented against Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva,” stated Gilmar.