By JOÃO QUARTIM DE MORAES*
O that settled in Curitiba was a death squad group, totally outside the legal parameters.
In April 2019, one of the prosecutors of the notorious Lava Jato, Diogo Castor de Mattos, was removed from the “tremendous” board that ruled what they call the “Republic of Curitiba”. No further explanations at that time. The explanation surfaced three months later. Walter Delgatti Neto, one of those arrested by the Federal Police for having captured collusion between those prosecutors, revealed in a statement that Castor's removal was the initiative of his colleagues, uncomfortable with his participation in the financing of posters ("billboards" in the language of the Empire) in support for Lava Jato, that is, to advertise themselves.
The photograph of the panel displayed on the road that gives access to the Afonso Pena Airport, on the outskirts of Curitiba, was published in Thiago Herdy's column (magazine Time): “Task force prosecutor paid billboard praising Lava Jato”. Judging by the artistic quality, the canvas cannot have been expensive to produce. On an edifying green, yellow and blue background, an arc of a circle horizontally separates an upper part showing a portrait of the Lavajateira family album and a lower part, containing a text that glorifies his accomplishments.
In the photo, nine indomitable prosecutors pose respecting the hierarchy: four on one side, four on the other and in the center, taller than all, like a Branco de Neve surrounded by eight dwarfs, pontificates the vain Deltan Dalagnol, Sérgio Moro's partner in manipulation procedural. The self-celebrating text by Dalagnol and his assistants is short and thick, in the worst sense of the word: “Welcome to (sic) Republic of Curitiba – land of Operation Lava Jato – the investigation that changed the country. Here the law is fulfilled. March 17th, five years of Operation Lava Jato – Brazil is grateful”. The Brazil of coxinhas had already thanked, giving Moro, head of Lava Jato, the position of Bolsonaro's Minister of Justice.
Two phrases stand out in this vulgar exhibitionism: “the investigation that changed the country”; “here the law is fulfilled”. The first is true: Lavajatismo changed Brazil (for much worse) by paving the way for Bolsonaro to become president. The second is a liar. Moro, Dalagnol et caterva climbed the trail of success by nudging the laws. The serious abuses and violations for which they are responsible have fallen into the public domain and were forcefully condemned by Minister Gilmar Mendes, who in an interview on February 12th declared: “what was installed in Curitiba was a death squad group, totally out of legal parameters”.
Ten days later, on February 22nd, another revelation was added to the well-known attacks by the lavajatista gang against the laws. Federal police chief Erika Marena was accused of having forged, in January 2016, at the height of the witch hunt in the Republic of Curitiba, a statement of testimony, simulating having heard a witness. She wanted to show her work to Deltan, but the latter, smarter, was concerned about the forgery, commenting to a partner: “she understood that it was our request and drew up a deposition term as if she had heard the guy, with a clerk and everything, when not heard nothing [...]. It gives at least a falsehood [...]. DPFs are easily exposed to administrative problems”. The prosecutors, once the fraud was verified, were exclusively concerned with finding ways to hide it. Trickery was shielded: a new crime that covered up the other.
Even so, the ascension of the lavajatista delegate was interrupted. Rolling upstairs, Marena went to head the “fight against corruption” in the PF of Santa Catarina. There she was the protagonist of the most cruel and cowardly feat of lavajatismo. On September 14, 2017, with the authorization of federal judge Juliana Cassol, based on a favorable opinion by attorney André Bartuol, of the Federal Public Ministry, the fierce delegate triggered the moral annihilation operation of Luiz Carlos Cancellier, Rector of the Federal University of Santa Catarina. Catherine (UFSC).
It was based on a piece that was at least dubious: the ombudsman at the University, Rodolfo Hickel do Prado, Cancellier's disaffection, accused him of "obstructing" investigations at UFSC regarding alleged irregularities in a distance learning program, which occurred during his term in office. predecessor. The ombudsman considered “obstruction” of justice the mere fulfillment, by the dean, of his strict ex officio duty: requesting a review of the process, for knowledge. Impossible for him to foresee that this request would destroy his life.
The fragility of the pretext for the arrest did not inhibit the Federal Police's silly exhibitionism: “115 police officers were mobilized to arrest Cancellier, an unarmed citizen, without minions or bodyguards”. The sadistic cruelty of police and judicial violence did not spare the Dean any humiliation. After testifying at the PF, he was taken, in defiance of the law, to the Florianópolis penitentiary, where, “treated as a dangerous criminal, he had his feet chained, his hands handcuffed, and naked, submitted to an intimate search (to say it bluntly: he had his anus searched by police in search of drug bags), he wore his prison uniform and was finally thrown into a dungeon in the maximum security wing”. Roberto Amaral, from whom we took the phrases between quotation marks, compares the role of the ombudsman on duty at UFSC to “the 'security' colonels installed in the rectory of federal universities, after the military coup”.
Banned from attending the University, depressed and desperate, Cancellier only found a way to say no to his tormentors: on October 2, he threw himself from the seventh floor of a shopping center in Florianópolis. He had not yet turned sixty. The Lava Jato steamroller was crushing yet another “suspect”. But the wave of indignation that swept the enlightened circles of the country did not affect the operators of the judicial machine. A quick inquiry to investigate (actually, to cover up) Cancellier's death left completely unpunished those who, coldly abusing their powers, had annihilated a life. Delegate Marena continued to roll up the stairs: in December 2017, two months after the tragic outcome of the police intervention at UFSC, Delegate Fernando Segóvia, placed by Michael Temer at the head of the Federal Police, promoted her to the Regional Police Superintendence Federal in the State of Sergipe.
The situation was conducive to lavajatista truculence. At stake was the greater political objective of the coup rightist after overthrowing Dilma Rousseff in 2016: to prevent Lula from being a candidate in 2018, because if he were, he would win. The sinister Moro had already done his part: on July 12, 2017, he had sentenced Lula in the 1st instance to a heavy prison sentence.
The unusual speed with which Lula’s trial in the second instance was scheduled (January 2, 24, less than six and a half months later, when the average interval is about 2018 days), opens up the “anything goes” from the right to not let him return to the presidency. Feeding the atmosphere of auto da fe, Rede Globo and the other major media distilled poisonous “news” day and night and extolled Moro’s good services et caterva to the moralist crusade.
Important in this intoxication campaign was to prevent Cancellier's shadow from disturbing the “script” of Lula's conviction. On December 22, the newspaper Folha de S. Paul made his contribution to the cover-up of the crime, proclaiming in large letters: “Reports reinforce the suspicion of the PF about the rector of UFSC”. After pushing Cancellier to death row, the next task was to kill his honor. The newspaper does not bring any new facts likely to change what was already known about the “suspicions” of Marena and her partners. Nothing that invalidates even a comma of “The rector's assassination”, Roberto Amaral's indignant protest published in Carta Capital on 7/12/2017.
A year later, Marena was awarded again: Sérgio Moro, appointed Minister of Justice for the newly elected Bolsonaro, appointed her head of the asset recovery and international legal cooperation department. He would still be there, if the split between the Bolsonarist wing and the far-right Lava Jatist wing had not cost him his job. Perhaps the forged statement will cost him even more: his Lava Jato supporters no longer do what they want.
Whatever happens to her, she and her partners who organized “the most infamous operation of the entire Lava Jato period” (the expression is from a recent article by journalist Luis Nassif) will always carry the indelible bloodstain of Dean Cancellier.
*João Quartim de Moraes He is a retired full professor at the Department of Philosophy at Unicamp. Author, among other books, of The military left in Brazil (Popular Expression).
