Former Judge Sergio Moro, who in his time as a magistrate imprisoned former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and later served as Minister of Justice in the Government of Jair Bolsonaro, won a seat in the Brazilian Senate in the legislative elections this Sunday.
Moro, the former symbol of the fight against corruption in Brazil, even wanted to run for the presidential elections, but finally his party, Unión Brasil, forced him to desist; and today he prevailed with 33.7% of the votes for the state of Paraná (south), with 98.2% of the polls counted.
The former judge was ahead of Paulo Martins, who was the closest candidate to Bolsonaro (29.1%); Álvaro Dias (23.9%); and Rosane Ferreira (8.0%).
Moro obtained the seat that was disputed in the state of Paraná, from where he judged in the first instance the cases of Operation Lava Jato, which in 2014 uncovered a corruption plot in the state-owned Petrobras, and imprisoned businessmen and politicians, including Lula, who spent 580 days in prison.
Another of his allies in Lava Jato, the then coordinating prosecutor of that operation, Deltan Dallagnol, was elected federal deputy, being the most voted from Paraná, even ahead of the president of the PT, Gleisi Hoffmann, according to official results.
Moro’s wife, Rosângela Moro, who is a candidate for federal deputy for the state of São Paulo, is also running in these legislative elections.
Operation Lava Jato fell into disgrace from the moment the Supreme Court annulled many of these processes due to jurisdictional problems and, in addition, declared that Moro was not “impartial” in cases brought against Lula, who will presumably dispute a second round of elections. the presidential ones before Bolsonaro.
Moro left the judiciary to become Bolsonaro’s Minister of Justice in 2019, who had won the elections the previous year and this year aspires to renew his mandate for another four years.
However, he resigned from the position in April 2020, at odds with the head of state, whom he accused of politically interfering in the Federal Police to favor his own interests.
Subsequently, he launched himself into the presidential race and the polls came to place him as the third favorite, behind Lula and Bolsonaro, with around 10% of the voting intentions, although Unión Brasil finally discarded his name.
Some 156 million Brazilians went to the polls today to elect the president, 27 governors, 513 federal deputies and a third of the 81 senators, in addition to the regional legislative chambers. EFE
