Supreme Court justice seeks probe of colleague as crisis deepens

Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes has asked for fellow Justice André Mendonça to be investigated for alleged abuse of authority, administrative misconduct and impeachable offenses.

Moraes also accuses his colleague of compromising judicial impartiality and favoring political groups in investigations into Banco Master and fraud involving Brazil’s National Social Security Institute (INSS).

The request, sent to Supreme Court Chief Justice Edson Fachin, came two days after Mendonça unsealed a Federal Police report citing messages sent by former banker Daniel Vorcaro, Banco Master’s owner, to a contact attributed to Moraes. In the messages, Vorcaro sought to interfere with and obtain information about investigations that led to his arrest in November last year.

The episode triggered an unprecedented crisis at the Supreme Court, which has now intensified with the request for an investigation into Mendonça.

Mendonça did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Call for investigation

Moraes used the so-called fake news inquiry, which he has overseen since 2019, as the basis for requesting the investigation.

In the decision sent to Fachin, Moraes said he ordered Federal Police Director-General Andrei Rodrigues on Tuesday (Sept. 1) to provide intelligence reports produced “in response to the need to document numerous irregularities and illegal acts” in the handling of Operation “Sem Desconto”, involving the INSS, and Operation Compliance Zero, involving Banco Master. The decision does not make clear whether the Federal Police produced the reports on its own initiative.

Moraes said the irregularities identified by the Federal Police indicated that Mendonça sought to “steer the production of evidence toward falsely accusing Supreme Court justices of crimes, expressly naming Justices Gilmar Mendes, Dias Toffoli, Luiz Fux, Alexandre de Moraes and Nunes Marques, as well as the prosecutor general and the director-general of the Federal Police.”

The information provided would also have shown a series of alleged irregularities, Moraes said, including the “usurpation” of the police authorities’ “control over the investigations,” improper handling of plea-bargain negotiations and the steering of investigations toward specific targets for political reasons. Those alleged targets included Moraes himself and Senate President Davi Alcolumbre (Brazil Union Party).

Evidence challenge

In addition to potentially leading to an investigation into Mendonça, Moraes’s request could result in evidence gathered in the Compliance Zero and Sem Desconto operations being invalidated.

Among other issues, Moraes challenges the chain of custody of the evidence — the set of procedures established under Brazil’s Code of Criminal Procedure governing how evidence collected in criminal cases must be handled, preserved, processed, stored and disposed of.

Moraes argues, for example, that measures ordered by Mendonça, such as granting early access to raw data extracted from devices before the Federal Police had filtered the material and verified its authenticity, breached the chain of custody and harmed “the criminal investigation, including by allowing several leaks.”

He said a Federal Police intelligence report found that Mendonça’s decisions in the two cases could, in theory, have amounted to “usurpation of the police authorities’ control over the investigations, with a clear loss of impartiality due to ‘growing indications of bias in the conduct of judicial oversight, reflected in increasingly intense thematic steering toward a specific investigative line,’ as well as a breach of the chain of custody of the seized evidence.”

Moraes also accuses Mendonça of acting for personal and political reasons. One indication, he argues, is that Mendonça allegedly steered the investigation toward particular targets, including Alcolumbre. Moraes also refers to himself in the third person in several passages of the decision.

“The Federal Police points to several actions by the reporting justice, André Mendonça, that, in theory, constitute administrative misconduct, impeachable offenses and abuse of authority, including the targeting of specific individuals for investigation for personal and political reasons, in an attempt to incriminate Justice Alexandre de Moraes and Senator Davi Alcolumbre,” one passage of the decision says.

Moraes says neither the Federal Police nor the Prosecutor General’s Office (PGR) accused him of committing crimes. He argues that Mendonça therefore sought to investigate him in an effort to uncover criminal offenses that could be used against him.

Fachin’s review

Shortly after Moraes’s order became public, Fachin requested information from Moraes, Mendonça, the PGR and the Federal Police about the report citing Vorcaro’s messages.

The measures are intended to establish the full circumstances surrounding the production of the report ordered by Mendonça on conversations found on Vorcaro’s phone that exposed his relationship with Moraes.

The chief justice wants to review all the information before submitting the report to the Supreme Court’s full bench to discuss what steps should be taken, including the possibility of opening an investigation into Moraes.

Among the information Fachin requested were details on compliance with the Judiciary Organic Law, any access to private documents or confidential information, and the circumstances surrounding a police operation. Fachin also wants clarification on the conditions under which Mendonça ordered the report to be produced.

Police presence

Before the crisis escalated, the court’s longest-serving justice, Gilmar Mendes, said he had suggested to Fachin that Federal Police officials be barred from working in justices’ chambers.

Mendes said such arrangements tend to influence the handling of investigations overseen by Supreme Court justices. He also said he considered such close relationships between investigators and judges inappropriate.

Four Federal Police officials currently work at the Supreme Court. Two are assigned to Mendonça’s chambers. Moraes is also assisted by one, while another works in the court’s security division.

On Thursday (Sept. 3), as he left the Senate chamber, Alcolumbre was asked about Moraes’s request concerning Mendonça. He said he was unaware of the decision.

“I don’t know anything about it. I don’t know what the decision was,” he said.

(Gabriela Guido contributed reporting.)

*By Tiago Angelo, Giullia Colombo and Mateus Coutinho — Brasília

Source: Valoar International

https://valorinternational.globo.com/