Judge Renato Borelli, of the 15th Federal Court of the Federal District, decided to send the investigation of Operation Acesso Paigo to the Federal Supreme Court (STF). According to a decision handed down yesterday (23) by the magistrate, there is the presence of “occupier of a position with jurisdictional prerogative” and the case cannot continue in the first instance of Justice. 
With the decision, Minister Cármen Lúcia will have to analyze whether the investigation will continue in the Supreme Court or there will be a slicing of the investigation between the Court and the federal court.
Before reaching the lower court, the investigation began to go through the Supreme Court, but was sent to Judge Borelli after former Minister of Education Milton Ribeiro left office.
The operation was launched on Wednesday (22) to investigate the alleged trafficking of influence and corruption in the release of public resources from the National Fund for the Development of Education (FNDE), an agency linked to the Ministry of Education (MEC).
In the operation, in addition to Milton Ribeiro, pastors Arilton Moura and Gilmar Santos and two other suspects were arrested. Yesterday, all were released by order of judge Ney Bello, of the Federal Regional Court of the 1st Region (TRF1), who granted a habeas corpus at the request of the defense.
Defense
In a note, Milton Ribeiro’s defense declared that it received with surprise the decision that sent the investigation to the STF and stated that the measure could render the investigation’s decisions null.
“Lawyer Daniel Bialski, who sponsors the defense of former minister Milton Ribeiro, clarifies that he received with surprise the judicial decision to send the case files of the investigation against his client back to the Federal Supreme Court.
Observing the audio quoted in the decision, it is kind of mentioning recordings/messages involving authority with privileged jurisdiction, which occurred before the operation started. If that were the case, there would be no competence of the judge of the first degree to analyze the request made by the police authority and, consequently, decree preventive detention.
The defense will still analyze everything and the whole that was attached to the case file, if it is granted the full view of the documentation. However, if this fact is really proven, acts and decisions taken are null due to absolute incompetence and only reinforces the assessment that we are facing judicial activism and, perhaps, abuse of authority, which will also need to be the object of an accurate analysis”, says the statement.
