Brazilian court dismisses lawsuit against Lula da Silva

The Federal Public Prosecutor's Office requested the dismissal of one of Lula da Silva's lawsuits in which he was accused of receiving R$2.2 million in bribes from the construction company OAS, paid in the form of booking and renovation of the triplex of the Solaris building, a change of favoring the company in Petrobras contracts.

Lula's conviction was handed down by Judge Sergio Moro in July 2017, who sentenced the former president to nine years and six months for corruption and money laundering. In April 2018, Panel 8 of Federal Regional Court 4 increased the sentence to 12 years and months in prison.

The evidence was abundant and included invoices from the OAS construction company and other companies; telephone messages and testimonies from former OAS President Leo Pinheiro; testimony of the OAS engineer who accompanied the visit of former First Lady Marisa Letícia; testimony of Cocinas that confirmed the renovations; testimony of the former director of the OAS Agenor Franklin Magalhaes Medeiros who confirmed the bribe to Lula, including the renovation of a private elevator, among others.

The request to archive the proceedings of Lula da Silva were made on December 6 without proof of his innocence. This request from prosecutors was due to the old age of the former president and the formalities of criminal procedural law in Brazil. In other words, a formal question of law and nothing related to the material part.

It allowed him to reverse the crimes of the former president in Brazil was the political influence that Lula da Silva had on the Supreme Court of Brazil (STF). And this consolidation of impunity stems from the STF's actions to make the former inmate an eligible presidential candidate. It is important to know that the Workers' Party appointed 7 of the 11 STF judges to the current membership.

In April 2021, the Federal Supreme Court (STF) decided to annul the decisions of the Federal Court of Curitiba by a vote of 8 to 3. In March 2021, Brazil's Supreme Court justices (who were elected by political appointment) said Sergio Moro (who was a career judge) would not be duly impartial. And with this decision, they ended all the efforts of Operation Lava Jato that sought to combat corruption in Brazil and had former President Lula da Silva as the leader of the criminal group (second Operation Lava Jato).

In recent days, in addition to guaranteeing impunity for the crimes committed, former President Lula's lawyers also sued the São Paulo Court of Justice to seek to recover R$815,000 from the purchase of the apartment in Edifício Solares, in Guarujá, São Paulo. That is, Lula spent years saying that the apartment was not his (when one of the crimes was precisely “hidden property”), and now that he is guaranteed his impunity, he seeks in the Brazilian justice itself to recover the amount of apartment that was the cause of the prison (for the millionaire renovations in the apartment and even a private elevator that was the famous “triplex case”).

Brazilian society will have to live with the shame of impunity and the derision of former president and multi-convict Lula da Silva.