Brazilian Supreme Court has started to analyze decision overturning Lula’s convictions

BRAZIL.- The Supreme Court of Brazil began to analyze this Wednesday in plenary session the annulment of the corruption convictions against Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, dictated by one of its judges, who restored political rights to the former left-wing president.

In this new trial with the potential to shake up Brazilian politics, the 11 magistrates could also vote on the subsequent decision of a courtroom to declare former judge Sergio Moro “partial” in the sentence for which the former president was incarcerated.

Justice Edson Fachin unleashed a storm on March 8 whereas the Curitiba court which sentenced Lula, 75, for two reasons, was not competent to do so and that the former president (2003-2010) should be tried again by the federal justice in Brasilia.

These cases, to which Lula has always pleaded not guilty, are linked to the Lava Jato investigation into bribes paid to politicians to secure contracts with the state-owned oil company Petrobras. The Attorney General’s Office (PGR) appealed the quashing of the sentences, but Fachin dismissed the appeal and ruled that the plenary session of the court must decide.

Fachin’s decision did not make Lula innocent, but it opened the door for him to challenge President Jair Bolsonaro, his avowed enemy, in the 2022 election, which he has yet to decide. If the Court now refutes Fachin’s thesis, Lula would lose this right.

Lula was convicted by Moro in 2017 for bribery and money laundering as the beneficiary of a beach apartment donated by a construction company. After being sentenced in second instance, in 2018, he was detained for 18 months and was excluded from the presidential race won by Bolsonaro.

The former union leader was released after the Supreme Court ruled in November 2019 that those convicted had the right to exhaust all legal remedies before the actual execution of the sentence. That same month, he was sentenced to 17 years in second instance for another case, accused of having received bribes from construction companies in the form of works on a site in Atibaia (Sao Paulo).

Lula has two other pending complaints in Curitiba, which due to Fachin’s decision also went to Brasilia, along with at least three other cases that are already in the Federal District. The court could also continue to analyze whether it supports the ruling, also from March, that Moro acted with bias in the conviction in the department’s case.

The move is yet another setback for the Lava Jato investigation, in which Moro was the lead figure and which has sent dozens of prominent businessmen and politicians from nearly every party to jail. And that has political implications, as Moro ended up being Bolsonaro’s justice minister, until he stepped down after falling out with the president. Many analysts place him in the presidential race in 2022.

AFP