The defense of former Brazilian President Lula da Silva (2003-2010) ruled out on Wednesday using the messages that Sergio Moro sent as a judge to the prosecutors of Operation Lava Jato, after the “habeas corpus” that acknowledged partiality in this process, because “The bias is more than proven.”
Lula’s lawyer, Cristiano Zanin, has argued that the defense must not “add new elements to the trial,” which will have to be tried again in the first half of 2021 by the second full court, according to Brazilian newspaper Folha in Sao Paulo. ”.
“Moro’s peculiarity is more than proven,” Zanin said, after a series of phone messages from former Justice Minister Jair Bolsonaro were revealed as part of Operation Spoofing, in which hackers gained access to the information.
This week, the Supreme Court upheld the order to give Lula’s defense unlimited access to those messages in which Moro, who was the judge in the case, was read, guided the indictment and even called witnesses against the former Brazilian president.
Moro and prosecutors demanded that these messages not be taken into account during the trial, as they were obtained illegally. Former Minister Bolsonaro defended on Tuesday that none of these conversations show “procedural fraud, violations, violation of impartiality or any other illegal act”.
However, Lula’s defense is of the opposite opinion and is expected to be used during trial sessions against the former president for an alleged corruption offense related to the Odebrecht construction company.
“We do not need more discussions in the process, which already has enough evidence. The defense is interested in ending a process that began in 2018,” Zanin said.
“Habeas corpus” was filed in 2016 on the assumption that there was already evidence against Moro, according to the Supreme Court decision, which registered and prosecuted Lula’s lawyers to find out about his defense strategy, in addition to the fact that he recalled how he violated the secrecy of With regard to the sentence against the former Minister of Finance of Lula, Antonio Palocci, “who favored” the then candidate Jair Bolsonaro, who appointed him Chief Justice.