PGR asks for investigation against Renan Calheiros and Eduardo Braga to be closed

The Attorney General’s Office (PGR) requested the shelving of an investigation involving senators Eduardo Braga (MDB-AM) and Renan Calheiros (MDB-AL) and former senator Romero Jucá (MDB) for alleged crimes of passive corruption, money laundering and criminal organization.

The parliamentarians had been accused of receiving bribes in favor of the former Hypermarcas group, now Hypera Pharma (HYPE3), in the pharmaceutical sector. The suspicion was that the company had paid around R$20 million to parliamentarians through a lobbyist.

But the Attorney General of the Republic, Paulo Gonet, contradicted the position of the Federal Police, which had indicted the three politicians, and understood that there was not enough evidence in the case.

In a report sent to the Federal Supreme Court (STF), Gonet maintained that the accusations against the congressmen were based solely on the word of whistleblowers − which would contravene consolidated jurisprudence in the Court − and claimed that the indictment would be “absolutely null”.

“The criminal hypothesis, regarding the criminal authorship of the parliamentarians, is informed only by the statements of the collaborators, without corroboration in the other information collected in the investigation, even after the execution of exhaustive precautionary measures aimed at gathering new evidence”, maintained Gonet.