• March 8, 2021, 3:51 p.m. ET

RIO DE JANEIRO — A Supreme Court justice in Brazil on Monday tossed out several criminal cases against former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, restoring his right to seek the presidency again, in a decision with the potential to reshape Brazil’s political future.

Mr. da Silva, a fiery leftist leader who led Brazil from 2003 to 2010, had been the front-runner in the 2018 presidential contest eventually won by Jair Bolsonaro. But the Supreme Court in April of that year ruled that Mr. da Silva could not appear on the ballot as a result of a conviction in a corruption case handed down in 2017.

With his political rights restored, Mr. Silva is widely expected to run against Mr. Bolsonaro in next year’s presidential election.

The incumbent, a polarizing far-right leader who pays homage to Brazil’s military dictatorship, would face a formidable challenge in Mr. da Silva, a former political prisoner who remains revered among poor Brazilians.

Mr. da Silva, 75, and many of his supporters have long argued that the criminal cases against him were politically motivated. Mr. da Silva was convicted of accepting a seaside apartment as part of a kickback scheme involving government contracts.

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The former president was sentenced to 12 years in prison, but a Supreme Court ruling in November 2019 allowed him to remain free while his appeals were pending.

The federal judge who oversaw that case, Sergio Moro, left the bench soon after Mr. Bolsonaro took office, and joined his cabinet as justice minister. The anti-corruption task force that investigated Mr. da Silva, which was based in the southern city of Curitiba, was disbanded earlier this year amid questions over ethical and procedural irregularities by its prosecutors.

On Monday, a Supreme Court justice, Edson Fachin, ruled that Mr. da Silva should never have been prosecuted in Curitiba. The decision, which covers four criminal cases, did not represent an acquittal of Mr. da Silva. The attorney general’s office said shortly after the decision was handed down that it would seek a ruling from the full court.

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Justice Fachin said the former president could still face charges if prosecutors in the capital, Brasília, decide to take on some of the vacated cases. Mr. da Silva faces three other corruption cases in Brasília, which have not yet reached a verdict.

Ernesto Londoño reported from Rio de Janeiro. Letícia Casado contributed reporting from Brasília.Ex-President ‘Lula’ Is Freed From Prison in Brazil After Supreme Court RulingNov. 8, 2019Opinion | Luiz Inácio Lula da SilvaLula: There Is a Right-Wing Coup Underway in BrazilAug. 14, 2018

Ernesto Londoño is the Brazil bureau chief, based in Rio de Janeiro. He was previously an editorial writer and, before joining The Times in 2014, reported for The Washington Post.

O post Brazil’s Ex-President ‘Lula’ May Run for Office Again as Court Cases Are Tossed apareceu primeiro em PLATAFORMA BRASÍLIA.

Mr. Estrada is the executive director of the Political Observatory of Latin America and the Caribbean at Sciences Po in Paris and analyzes how political communication affects judicial decisions.

Brazil is experiencing several crises at the same time — the catastrophic health situation, the fragile economy and extreme political polarization. We can now add corruption of the judicial system to the list. It didn’t have to be like this. Brazilians had high hopes seven years ago, when a young magistrate named Sergio Moro launched an anti-corruption operation called Lava Jato, or Operation Car Wash.

Seemingly overnight, with the support of the judicial system and the media, Mr. Moro and the prosecutors in charge of the operation were going to save Brazil. And in a short time their efforts yielded impressive results: Millions of dollars were recovered, and several high-level politicians and businessmen were imprisoned, culminating in the arrest of former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in April 2018.

Did Operation Car Wash prove that justice could put a stop to endemic corruption in Brazil, or was it just a fairy tale that veiled other political interests? In recent weeks, the dark side of Lava Jato has been laid bare, and a feeling of deep disenchantment with so-called Curitiba justice, named after the capital of the southern state of Paraná, where the task force was headquartered, has spread throughout the country. Operation Car Wash was branded the largest anti-corruption investigation in the world, but it became the biggest judicial scandal in Brazilian history. When the task force was dissolved on Feb. 1, almost no one took to the streets or social media to mourn its end.

Instead of eradicating corruption, achieving greater transparency in politics and strengthening democracy, the now notorious Operation Car Wash paved the way for Jair Bolsonaro to come to power after eliminating his main rival, Mr. da Silva, from the presidential race. This has contributed to the chaos Brazil is experiencing today.

Car Wash prosecutors have attributed its successes to the use of innovative methods (in particular, the role of plea bargains) that allowed the courts to act quickly. They cite the 1,450 arrest warrants, 179 criminal proceedings and 174 prison sentences resulting from it. However, hacked phone app messages revealed that instead of following due legal process and carrying them out in the courts, Mr. Moro used a phone app as a back channel to communicate with the prosecution team and strategize which charges should be filed against the former president. On Feb. 9 the Supreme Court granted Mr. da Silva’s defense team access to the leaks.

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Although it has long been known that Mr. Moro convicted Mr. da Silva for indeterminate acts and on flimsy charges, we now know that Mr. Moro himself helped mount the accusation against Mr. da Silva, thus violating the Brazilian justice system’s legal principle of not being a judge and a prosecutor at the same time.

When Mr. da Silva’s lawyers complained that they were illegally spied on by the Lava Jato operation, they were assured it was a mistake. Today we know that the prosecutors were periodically informed by federal police agents in charge of telephone surveillance, helping them devise strategies that would lead to his conviction.

Mr. Moro boasted about the money flowing back to the public coffers, failing to mention that the fines the U.S. Department of Justice imposed on Petrobras and Odebrecht went to a private law foundation managed by Car Wash prosecutors, as well as N.G.O. leaders. By doing so, the prosecutors bypassed the Brazilian Constitution, as those funds should be allocated to the public budget. As a consequence, the Supreme Court suspended the foundation in 2019.

It will be a while before all the ins and outs of the operation come to light, but what we do know is that to combat corruption, our hero Mr. Moro used methods in flagrant violation of the rule of law. As a reward, he was handed the position of minister of justice and public security.

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This doesn’t necessarily mean that there is no effective way to combat corruption. Indeed, there’s much we can learn from the Brazilian experience.

During Mr. da Silva’s administrations, the Brazilian justice system underwent a profound reform process that increased funding and resources, created specific jurisdictions to fight money laundering, and increased interagency cooperation to follow the money and hunt down white-collar criminals.

Mr. Moro and the members of the investigation were empowered to act decisively and get results; this bothered Mr. Bolsonaro, who has done everything possible to reverse these policies. The problem is that Mr. Moro and the prosecutors perverted these institutional advances — including their independence from public power — by transforming a simple temporary task force into an entity above the law at the service of a political objective, initially relying on the support of the higher courts.

Mr. Moro, who resigned from his ministerial position in April 2020, made clear during his stint in the magistracy and the executive that like his former boss, he believes that democracy and the rule of law can be set aside in the name of the fight against corruption. And even that statement can be disputed now that Mr. Moro, in a clear conflict of interest, works for a law firm hired by Odebrecht.

To put an end to the promiscuous relationship between money and politics — the underlying problem revealed by the operation, and its main accomplishment — it is not enough to prosecute and imprison. Companies were bankrupted, and the country was put in turmoil, but even after hundreds of arrests, corruption has not abated.

Brazilian democracy is in danger. To change this, it is necessary to go beyond prosecution and institute true political reform that can help address the root of the problem by attacking the illicit financing of political campaigns. It is also necessary to introduce more effective tools of accountability in the judiciary, in order to avoid cases like Operation Car Wash, which had institutional protection even after it became clear that wrongdoing had been committed since the early stages of the investigation.

Operation Car Wash is over, but its story has yet to be fully told. For Brazil to face its multiple crises, to truly attack corruption and overcome this dystopia, there must be a critical reassessment of the investigation.

Gaspard Estrada (@Gaspard_Estrada) is the executive director of the Political Observatory of Latin America and the Caribbean at Sciences Po in Paris. This essay was translated by Erin Goodman from the Spanish.

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Se esté a favor o en contra de la operación, queda clara una cosa: el tejemaneje entre corrupción y política sigue estando al orden del día. El mismo día1 en el que se anunció la disolución de la operación, Arthur Lira, un político investigado por posibles actos de corrupción, fue electo presidente de la cámara de diputados.

Pero ni en las calles ni en las redes sociales, ninguno de los dos anuncios generó mayor indignación. El inmenso capital político y social acumulado por el Sergio Moro, el célebre juez que inició Lava jato, y los procuradores se ha ido evaporando en los últimos años. Y esto lleva a otra conclusión: En lugar de ayudar a erradicar la corrupción, lograr mayor transparencia en la política y fortalecer la democracia, la famosa operación contribuyó al caos que hoy vive Brasil. Se vendía como la mayor operación anticorrupción del mundo, pero se volvió el mayor escándalo judicial de la historia brasilera.

Continue lendo em https://www.nytimes.com/es/2021/02/09/espanol/opinion/lava-jato-brasil.html

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