After obtaining a favorable decision at the Federal Supreme Court (STF), Sérgio Cabral awaits the bureaucratic procedures to leave the Military Police Prison Unit in Niterói (RJ). The defense of the former governor of Rio de Janeiro believes that he should be released on Monday (19). From then on, he must serve a house arrest order.
“We are waiting for the letters to be sent communicating the decision and the issuance of the release permit. This rarely happens today. It is more likely to happen on Monday, when there are normal working hours”, he told the Brazil Agency lawyer Daniel Bialski.
Yesterday (16), the Second Panel of the STF formed majority to attend a habeas corpus in favor of Sérgio Cabral. The defense of the former governor claimed the recognition of the incompetence of the 13th Federal Court of Curitiba, then headed by former judge Sérgio Moro, to determine the arrest and judge the Operation Lava Jato process on the alleged payment of bribes in works at the Petrochemical Complex from Rio de Janeiro (Comperj).
By three votes to two, it was decided to revoke the preventive detention, annul decisions taken in the process and send the case for analysis by the Federal Court of Rio. The trial began on November 9th. The deliberation took place electronically: it was up to each minister to register his vote in the virtual plenary.
Sérgio Cabral has been in prison for more than 6 years, since he was the target of Operation Calicut, an offshoot of Operation Lava Jato that started on November 17, 2016. According to the investigation, bribes were charged in the signing of contracts between companies and the government of Rio de Janeiro . Since then, Cabral has been implicated in different investigated corruption cases and has become a defendant in more than 30 cases, of which he was convicted in 23. Some sentences were later revoked or modified. Prior to these revisions, sentences amounted to more than 400 years in prison.
However, in 2019, the STF began to consider that the execution of a condemnatory sentence is only possible after all the resources have been exhausted. Until then, it was accepted to start serving the sentence after a second instance decision, which was considered unconstitutional. As Cabral can still appeal in all cases, he was kept in custody based on preventive detention orders, usually determined when it is recognized that the accused may commit crimes again or disrupt the progress of the process.
In all, the former governor was the subject of five preventive arrest warrants. Four had already been revoked, two of which were converted to house arrest. Thus, only a warrant that was in force kept Sérgio Cabral in the prison unit. The three ministers who made up the majority in favor of habeas corpus considered that maintaining a preventive detention for more than six years is excessive. At the same time, Gilmar Mendes, who had the tie-breaking vote in favor of the former governor, stressed that the decision does not mean acquittal, as the pending trials will follow their normal course.
After the decision, Sérgio Cabral’s lawyers informed, in a note, that after leaving the prison unit, the former governor will remain under house arrest pending the conclusion of the other criminal actions. “The defense trusts in a fair solution, aimed at recognizing its innocence and a series of nullities existing in the other processes to which it responds”, says the text.
