Minister Gilmar Mendes, of the Federal Supreme Court (STF), suspended this Tuesday (27.Sep.2022) a charge of R$ 18 million made by a Treasury prosecutor against the presidential candidate Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (EN). In the decision, he claims that the former president is innocent.
Daniel Wagner Gamboa, from the National Treasury, used Lava Jato evidence to make the charge. The prosecutor declared that the decisions in favor of PT given by the Supreme Court did not exonerate the former president, nor did they annul acts of Lava Jato.
When analyzing a complaint made by Lula on Tuesday, Gilmar affirmed that whoever is not convicted is, yes, innocent. He also said that the prosecutor demonstrates “some intellectual weakness” when making statements on the subject in their petitions. Here’s the intact of the decision (256 KB).
“The distinction between ‘irregular sentence’ and ‘innocence’, made by the unsuspecting referee, is of crystalline levity. This statement by the National Treasury Prosecutor, partially taken over by the act claimed, has clear teratological contours and a certain ideological coloring. When it does not demonstrate, rather, some intellectual weakness, for disregarding something that any student of the third semester of the law course is aware of: in the absence of a criminal conviction, any citizen retains, yes, the state of innocence”, stated.
Gilmar said that the prosecutor used illegal evidence to make the charge. He also stated that Wagner’s conduct could be considered abusive.
“The new Law on Abuse of Authority (Law 13.869/2019), in its art. 25, sole paragraph, criminalized the action of a public agent who makes use of evidence obtained through illegal means, to the detriment of an investigated or supervised person, with prior knowledge of his vices”said Gilmar.
According to the minister, the prosecutor’s performance requires “the immediate intervention of the Judiciary with a view not only to preserving the authority of the decisions of the Federal Supreme Court, but also to the reaffirmation of rights and guarantees that make up the backbone of the Democratic State of Law”.
The case refers to charges by the National Treasury against the Lula Institute in which Lula himself, his lecture company and Paulo Okamoto, director and former president of the Institute, are also responsible for the payment.
According to the Internal Revenue Service, the Lula Institute’s structure, employees and directors were used to “purposes other than those provided for in its bylaws”.
The PT’s defense went to the Supreme Court stating that the charge violates the decision of the Supreme Court that considered former judge Sergio Moro (União Brasil) partial and annulled decision-making acts of the former magistrate, now a politician.
The former president’s lawyers also criticized the PGFN demonstration, saying it is “absolutely vexatious”.
“Dissatisfied with just challenging this Supreme Court, the National Treasury Attorney Daniel Wagner Gamboa also shredded the constitutional text to, in an act of hysteria, try to discredit the Claimant’s innocence status – in the context of a fiscal precautionary measure, it is good to wish to register”, said the PT’s lawyers.
To Power 360lawyer Cristiano Zanin, who defends Lula, celebrated the decision. “It is yet another illegal development of the ‘car wash’ that we managed to dismantle, now in the tax area”said.
Understand
The administrative processes of the Farm originated from information obtained in the Aletheia Operation, the 24th phase of Lava Jato. The PT’s lawyers stated that the STF has already annulled the decisions involving the Federal Court of Curitiba against Lula.
The prosecutor, however, went to the TRF-3 (Federal Regional Court of the 3rd Region) in May this year, claiming that the annulment by the Supreme Court did not free Lula from the alleged tax debts.
“The STF did not exonerate the defendant Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. He did not address the merits of the conviction. It was not stated, at any time, that the defendant is innocent, but it was considered that it was not up to the Federal Court of Paraná to judge him in those specific cases. For the STF, the sentence given in Paraná was irregular and, therefore, invalid”said Gamboa.
“It should be noted that the STF annulled only the decision-making acts, leaving the validation of the instructive acts to the competent court of first instance”declared.
“Thus, under the terms of article 66 of the CPP, the decision of the STF does not prevent the continuation of the administrative collection process. Indeed, the tax assessment was not disturbed by the decision of the Supreme Court, and the defendants did not bring concrete elements capable of dispelling the presumption of veracity of the administrative acts”, went on.
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