Lava Jato. The operation that revealed a scheme of millionaire transnational bribes in 12 countries is being deleted in Brazil, where 2014 began. This collapse with the cancellation of about 115 sentences, increasingly accelerated and irreversible, will affect the linked processes that are developed in Peru. The prosecutors of the special team Rafael Vela and José Domingo Pérezas well as the Ad hoc attorney Silvana Carriónthey have two positions on this situation: they deny that the cancellation of the sentences affects the cases in Peru or minimize their impact only to aspects of international judicial cooperation.
“The possibilities that this can generate some type of turbulence are given by the context of the politicization of justice in Brazil. We have already had difficulties in the declaration of declaration of Jorge Barata. What was committed is the mechanism of international cooperation, said Vela Barba. For its part, Silvana Carrión points out that the officials of Odebrecht They have undergone effective collaboration and have delivered information, under Peruvian laws, so, he says, what Brazilian judges decide will have no incidence in Peru.
However, in principle it will not be the prosecutors and the attorney who decide. They can and should insist with the statements they collected in Sao Paulo, Salvador de Bahía and Curitiba and with the evidence delivered by the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht, from computer systems Drousys and My Web Day Bin the effective collaboration process that was created and signed in the city of Sao Paulo.
Those who will decide if what happens in Brazil has consequences in Peru will be other magistrates. The decision on the scope in Peru of the sentences issued by the Federal Supreme Court of Brazil corresponds to the Judicial Branch in three estates and, finally, to the Constitutional Court. The case judgment Ollanta Humala Scheduled for April 15 could give an indication of how you are and what your future will be.
The first game
Prosecutors, such as José Domingo Pérez, raise the accusation, but it will be the judges who decide
The decision of the judges will not be concentrated in one hand or a rapidly identifiable hand set and will not be in a single moment. Case investigation Lava Jato in Peru He has been more than eight years. The definitive decisions will be made – in the best case – in the next five years, in charge of a set of magistrates, which we can know today, but in the future, for various reasons, they will change.
It is highly probable that national judges of preparatory investigation and trial share the position of the Public Ministry and the Attorney General’s Office for the proximity they have had with the processes. In the following instances, it is more difficult to have an idea of the reasoning framework. This means that the real game will begin in the Appeal rooms of the National Superior Court of Specialized Criminal Justiceand will continue in the criminal halls of the Supreme Court. Then, the Constitutional Court will have the final word, in national headquarters.
The Lava Jato case in Brazil generated 79 operations that led to 278 convictions. In the center of the process were the state -owned Petrobras, the construction company Odebrecht (today Novonor), The meat industry, and reached former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
However, everything began to crumble, after, in June 2019, the journalistic portal The Intercept Brazil He published hacked conversations between Judge Sergio Moro, then converted into Minister of Justice of President Jair Bolsonaro, and the head of the task group, Deltan Dallagnol.
The hacking of the judge’s telegram accounts and prosecutors resulted in the Spoofing operation. In December 2020, Judge Ricardo Lewandovski, at the request of Lula’s lawyers, ordered more than 50 pages of messages to be made public, which exchanged, between September 2015 and June 2017, then Judge Moro and the prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol. From those messages, in June 2021, Judge Ricardo Lewandowski annulled all the probative material obtained by Curitiba Court in the case of Lula da Silva. A resolution that, in the following years, has been extended, in concepts and beneficiaries, by the judge José Antonio Dias Toffoli To include, for example, Marcelo Odebrecht and Antonio Palocci.
As of the current date, according to the anti -corruption groups of Brazil, there have been 115 sentences of the car washing operation, in different instances. In addition, the Public Ministry dissolved the task group and passed its files to the special action group in the fight against organized crime.
Toffoli’s decision
José Antonio Dias Toffoli , Federal Supreme Minister-Federal ” title=” José Antonio Dias Toffoli , Federal Supreme Minister-Federal ” width=”100%” height=”100%” loading=”lazy” decoding=”async”/>José Antonio Dias ToffoliFederal Supreme Minister-Federal
While there are criticism of the decisions of Dia Toffoli, various jurists admit that their arguments are valid. Toffoli’s decisions leave a bitter taste, but they are consequences of an operation that dirty their hands, violated the rules, ”he told The New York Times The professor of the Getulio Vargas Institute, Maíra Fernandes. Dias Toffoli resolved that, based on the content of the disseminated conversations, it was possible to identify three situations of clear illegality, which have hurt Brazil:
One, the judge defined the limits of the accusation and selected people to be denounced or not, according to the political sectors that he wanted to harm or favor. Two, the judge appointed a witness for the accusation and suggested illegal means to insert the evidence in the file, as if it were anonymous. Three, the judge worked together with the accusers to issue a pronouncement against the defense, and also pejoratively described the defensive strategies.
Then, in the nullity judgment of the Palocci case, the magistrate of the Federal Supreme Court of Brazil He is critical of the use of preventive detention to obtain statements. “The adoption of measures that aim to obtain collaboration or confession, under the pretext that they are necessary for investigation or criminal process, is clearly illegitimate, due to lack of constitutional justification,” said the magistrate.
Given the criticism of his decisions, he has stressed that he is not the only federal supreme judge who has issued nullity resolutions. Remember that Ricardo Lewandowski He questioned the obtaining and use of evidence without observing the official channels and the chain of custody. Edson Fachinon incompetence of the Court of Curitiba and Gilmar Mendeson the collusion of the judge and prosecutors of Curitiba.
The Ollanta Humala case will define the scope of condemnation cancellation
Prosecutor Germán Juárez and his prosecutor’s team awaits the judges’ decision
The sentence to former president Ollanta Humala and the Peruvian Nationalist Party For the contributions to the electoral campaigns of 2006 and 2011, it will be the first case that will allow to take into account how far the convictions annulled in Brazil have repercussions in Peru. The verdict, which will be read on April 15, 2025, will be in charge of the Third Collegiate Criminal Courtcomposed of Judges Mercedes Caballero, Nayko Coronado and Max Venoa. Initially, the judges had planned to publicize their decision on April 8.
It is the room that, by majority, in January annulled the trial Keiko Fujimori. A decision that was appealed by the Prosecutor’s Office and the Attorney General’s Office. In the last March, that majority decision was unanimously confirmed by the appeal judges. Humala’s defense managed to introduce in the probative phase one of the sentences issued, in May 2024, the judge of the Federal Supreme Court of Brazil, José Dias Toffoli. A failed that annulled all the evidence obtained in the winning process of Marcelo Odebrecht.
In addition, the magistrates have seen that the Prosecutor’s Office was not able to present the direct testimony in front of the collaborators and witnesses of Brazilian nationality, who were hosted by the effective collaboration in Peru, as a result of one of the decisions of the Brazilian justice. In this case, as a charge proof, prosecutor Germán Juárez presented the conviction to Antonio Palocci, today annulled, to demonstrate the illicit origin of the funds that, according to Jorge Barata, the Brazilian Workers Party contributed to the Peruvian Nationalist Party, in the 2011 elections.
According to judicial sources, the sentence could not be read on April 8 because some discrepancies between the judges were presented. Although for all it is a single ruling, in reality the judges must decide the legal situation of each of the 10 defendants for the responsibility of the legal persons. The contributions from Venezuela do not have a solid probative base, beyond the statement of Martín Belaunde and in the case of funds from Brazil is the legal situation that has occurred in the Supreme Court of that country.
