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Plea Bargains Freeze Proceedings of Car Wash Defendants

12/18/2017 - 12h02

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FELIPE BÄCHTOLD
FROM SÃO PAULO

There were 11 defendants; today they are 10 informers. Penal proceedings begun by Judge Sergio Moro ended up left out in the Car Wash (Lava Jato) trials in the state of Paraná after a series of plea bargains were signed since last year.

These are cases in which the judge decided to suspend proceedings temporarily in the face of the plea agreement negotiations that the Prosecutor General's Office made with defendants.

Court orders normally cite the priority of actions with arrested defendants.

In recent months, among the cases that received the most hearings in Paraná are the lawsuit against Aldemir Bendine, the former president of Petrobras, and the second criminal prosecution against former president Lula - the first action regarding the three-floor penthouse in Guarujá (in the state of São Paulo) is already in the second instance.

One of the cases in which the informers became a "majority" involves the groups of construction company Odebrecht and João Santana, the former marketing agent of the PT.

In one of the most conspicuous accusations in 2016, still during the Dilma Rousseff administration, the Car Wash task force said in an accusation that Odebrecht embezzled money from Petrobras to pay Santana in bank accounts abroad at the request of the PT.

Today Odebrecht executives as well as Santana and his wife, Mônica Moura, admit they committed these crimes. The only non informer left out of the 11 defendants was the former treasurer of the PT, João Vaccari Neto, who has been in jail since 2015.

Judge Moro decided to suspend the proceedings temporarily in August 2016. After one year and a half, the case has not made any relevant progress since.

In November, Brazil's Prosecutor General's Office defended in a document that proceedings should continue. The conclusion of this case has consequences on the execution of sentences of Odebrecht executives.

The president of Brazil's Supreme Court (STF), Justice Cármen Lúcia, who confirmed the plea bargain made with Odebrecht, ordered that informers will only begin to serve their sentences in home prison, for example, after they receive their actual sentences.

Translated by THOMAS MUELLO

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