Judge José Antonio Dias Toffoli, judge of the Supreme Federal Court (STF) of Brazil, has nullified the evidence from the confessions of executives of the giant Odebrecht _involved in the Lava Jato corruption scandal_, confirming that the imprisonment of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, linked to the same investigation, was “one of the country’s biggest judicial errors in history”.

Toffoli acknowledged Lula’s defense request and stated that the evidence received for the agreement with Odebrecth was useless as it had been obtained by “heterodox and illegal” means. Moreover, he believed that the purpose of that case was to “put a political leader behind bars,” Brazilian media reported.

“It was a montage that resulted from a power project by certain public agents with the aim of conquering the state by apparently legal means, but by methods and actions ‘contra legem’ (contrary to the law),” the judge said. the Supreme Court. Lula’s verdict.

In Brazil, Odebrecht was accused by the Public Prosecution Service of participating, along with other companies, politicians and intermediaries, in a network of bribes and falsified contracts with the state-owned company Petrobras.

The network, which was discovered in 2014 by the research called Lava Jato, it became one of the largest corruption scandals in the country. The case reached then-former president Lula da Silva, who was sentenced to eight years in prison for crimes of passive corruption and money laundering.

Allegations against the company have transcended Brazil, with lawsuits pending in other Latin American and African countries, and dozens of prominent politicians laced with corruption charges, including several former presidents.

In Ecuador, the case involved former Vice President of the Republic of Correísmo Jorge Glas, who was sentenced to six years in prison on December 13, 2017, along with four other defendants. as the author of the crime of illegal association in this corruption scheme for the bribes paid by the Brazilian company Odebrecht in Ecuador.

Glass, who has now been provisionally released, confirms that the Brazilian Federal Court’s ruling that the evidence used against politicians accused of receiving bribes obtained from Odebrecht’s technology systems is “tainted” and “cannot be are used”. leave the verdict against him unsubstantiated because the evidence would no longer exist.

Dias Toffoli implicated Glas in the decision to nullify tests that benefited Brazilian politicians, at the request of the defense of the former vice president of Correísmo.

Character with high positions around Lula

the Brazilian newspaper or globe indicates that Dias Toffoli was recommended by Lula da Silva in September 2009 to fill the vacancy at the STF after the death of Judge Carlos Menezes. After questioning in the Senate, his name was approved by a vote of 58 to 9 and 3 abstentions.

Toffoli was 41 years old when he arrived at the Federal Court and under current regulations he will be able to stay there until the year 2042 when he will be 75 years old. But before coming to the STF, Toffoli held important positions around the Brazilian president.

The Brazilian media remember that the judge he served as legal adviser for the victorious 2002 campaign, the first won by the Workers’ Party (PT). In addition, during Lula da Silva’s first term, he was assigned to the post of Deputy Chief of Legal Affairs of the Civil House, which at that time was commanded by José Dirceu.

But before that, in the 1990s, he was already legal adviser to the leadership of the PT in the Chamber of Deputies and Advisor to the Single Central of Workers (CUT), associated with the PT.

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In the STF, however, Toffoli took positions that distanced him from the PT. One such event took place in 2019, when Genival Inácio, Lula da Silva’s older brother, he died while the politician was imprisoned in Curitiba for corruption.

Lula’s lawyers had requested that the former president be allowed to attend Vavá’s funeral and burial, as he was known. To do so, they invoked the section of the Execution of Sentences Act, but Judge Carolina Lebbos, responsible for the Lava Jato case, denied the request.accepting recommendations from the Federal Police (PF) and the Public Prosecution Service.

Toffoli, then president of the Supreme Federal Court, finally granted Lula da Silva a habeas corpus guaranteeing him the “right to meet exclusively with his relatives (…) in a military unit of the region, even with the possibility of the body (of his brother) being taken to the above unitat the discretion of the family.

However, a spokesperson for the Lula Institute has said AFP That “the court decision came when the body was buried” in the Cementerio da Pauliceia in Sao Bernardo do Campo, 20 km from Sao Paulo.

The decision to force the dead brother to visit the living brother was considered abusive and Lula ultimately did not go. On more than one occasion, the current president cited the episode as a symbol of persecution.

When Lula da Silva was about to return to the Brazilian presidency, Toffoli sought him out to apologize for the episode with Vavá. The journalist Mônica Bergamo, out Folha de S.Paulo, He said in December 2022 that the judge approached the PT leader at the ceremony at the Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE) and apologized.

“You had the right to go to the wake,” the judge said, according to the publication. “I feel bad about that decision and I wanted to sleep tonight with your forgiveness,” he added. The president allegedly patted the judge on the back and told him to keep calm so they could talk in private later. (JO)