Odebrecht: Brazil cancels tests due to cooperation agreement

AND judge of the Brazilian Supreme Court canceled this Wednesday all the evidence obtained through cooperation agreements with Construction company Odebrecht which hit several politicians and businessmen from Brazil and other countries within the so-called Lava Jato operation.

The decision was from Judge José Dias Toffoli In response to a defense request The President of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who came to spend 580 days in prison convicted of corruption and money laundering in a trial that was later overturned and based in part on evidence offered by Odebrecht.

In his opinion, the judge also orders that entities such as The State Attorney’s Office of the Republic, the Legal Office of the Trade Union and the National Council of the Judiciary investigate the liability of public officials involved in entering into an immunity agreement with a construction company.

Toffoli also criticized the terms of the agreement odebrecht and ordered more information about leniency to be sent.

According to Toffoli, “the causes that led to the invalidity of the evidence obtained from the cooperation agreement concluded by Odebrecht are objective” and are not limited to the “subjective universe” from Lula.

The aforementioned agreement was reached through negotiations in Brazil, United States and Switzerland because of the suspicion that this construction company was bribing three countries.

However, he clarified that there is no request for international legal cooperation to investigate the process “everything, noting that formal channels have been bypassed”, which would happen “outside the legal regulation that refers to that matter”.

According to the judge, apart from dealing directly with authorities in the North American country and Switzerland, the judges acted without the “necessary jurisdiction” of official bodies such as the ministries of foreign affairs, justice and public security.

For Toffoli, the mentioned negotiations resulted “very serious consequences” for the Brazilian state and for “hundreds of defendants and legal entities in criminal proceedings, proceedings due to administrative instability, electoral processes and civil proceedings throughout the country, but also abroad”.

The judge’s decision is an extension of the decision given by the court in 2021 Judge Ricardo Lewandowski (now retired and whose cases Toffoli took over) who declared invalid the evidence regarding the Lula cases obtained from agreement with Odebrecht.

Brazil’s current president, who took up his third term in January 2023 after ruling the country from 2003 to 2010, was unable to participate in the 2018 presidential election because he was politically disabled due to a conviction that was later overturned.