Lula, Dilma, Other PT Politicians Acquitted of Criminal Organization Charges

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Judge Marcus Vinicius Reis Bastos has dismissed all allegations that Lula da Silva was involved in corruption cases in connection with the state-owned oil company Petrobras and the National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES).

Lula’s party member and successor in office, Dilma Rousseff, has also been acquitted, as have the former finance ministers Antonio Palocci and Guido Mantega and the former treasurer of the Workers Party (PT), João Vaccari Neto.

“Today we have secured Lula’s clear acquittal from an impartial judge,” said the left-wing politician’s attorney Cristiano Zanin. Meanwhile, the judge criticized the attempt “to criminalize the political activity of Lula da Silva”.

However, further corruption proceedings against Lula are still pending.

The verdict was handed down just over a month after the Brazilian Federal Prosecutor’s Office stressed that the charges against the four politicians of the former ruling PT had “negative consequences for democracy” and “could hinder the credibility and legitimacy of the political system”. The prosecutor’s office, therefore, requested that the lawsuit be dismissed.

Judge Reis Bastos stressed that the dismissed lawsuit had been based on the assumption that the accused had been part of a criminal organization.

The prosecution had not even made the effort to demonstrate the features of a criminal organization. The allegations were thus not only unfounded but represented a clear violation of the country’s Code of Criminal Procedure.

The lawsuit had been lodged in 2017 by the then Prosecutor General Rodrigo Janot, a resolute opponent of the PT. According to Janot, the PT politicians founded a criminal organization between 2002 and 2016 to divert funds from Petrobras, BNDES and the Ministry of Planning.

According to the prosecutors, Lula was one of the leaders of the alleged criminal organization. A charge that Reis Bastos now decisively rejected: the criminal code had been “abused”. Janot failed to provide even the most basic evidence that the defendants had formed a criminal organization.

The trial and verdict were closely followed in Brazil and Latin America as the charges against Lula and other Workers Party politicians are viewed as “lawfare”, the abusive political use of lawsuits against political opponents.

Source: Amerika21

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