STF: Nunes Marques asks for view and suspends judgment of Palocci

Minister Nunes Marques of the Federal Supreme Court (STF) requested a view and suspended on Friday (4) the judgment of the appeal dealing with the annulment of proceedings against former Minister Antonio Palocci in Operation Lava Jato.

With the suspension of the analysis of the case, the trial remains tied in 2 votes to 2.

Nunes Marques’s vote would break the trial, which until then was 2 votes to 2 in the Second Class. With the request for a view, he will have another 90 days to analyze the case.

Until then, ministers Edson Fachin and André Mendonça have voted against the annulment, while Gilmar Mendes and Dias Toffoli are favorable. The virtual trial started last week and has no date to resume.

The Second Panel of the Court tried an appeal from the Attorney General’s Office (PGR) that intended to suspend a decision of Dias Toffoli, rapporteur of the case.

In February of this year, Toffoli complied with the request for annulment made by Palocci’s lawyers and applied the precedents of the Court who considered former Judge Sergio Moro partial to make the sentences against the defendants of the investigations. Moro was the head judge of the 13th Federal Court in Curitiba.

With the decision, all procedures signed by Moro against Palocci were annulled. In one case, he was sentenced to 12 years in prison. Despite the annulment, the Palocci signed agreement agreement is maintained.

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About the case

In February this year, Minister Dias Toffoli, rapporteur of Lava Jato cases in the Supreme Court (STF), decided to apply to former Minister Antonio Palocci the same legal understanding that benefited President Lula (PT). In Toffoli’s assessment, there is evidence that there was collusion between prosecutors and judges of the Curitiba task force, which invalidates the evidence used against Palocci.

The decision, however, was questioned by the Attorney General’s Office (PGR), who presented an appeal to the Supreme Court. For the PGR, the tests against Palocci are not limited to those produced by Lava Jato and include elements that he himself recognized by signing an award -winning plea agreement. The Attorney General, Paulo Gonet, argues that the defense of the former minister must submit his claims in a separate case, to be tried in the first instance, and not directly in the Supreme.

This PGR feature is now under review by the Second Class of the Supreme Court. At the trial, Minister Edson Fachin voted against the automatic extension of the benefit to Palocci. For Fachin, the cases involving the former minister are different from those who have already been tried and the alleged irregularities of the Federal Court of Curitiba require a detailed investigation of the evidence. He pointed out that this type of analysis cannot be done through simplified actions, such as complaints or requests for extension.

“On the pretext of extension requests, it cannot examine large and generic claims on the most varied investigations arising from Operation Lava Jato, (…) this Supreme Court becoming a universal court of knowledge, when the Federal Constitution did not charge it,” said the minister in his vote.