In his failed attempt to close a plea bargain in , the former deputy claimed to have bought votes to try to elect the then (current) leader in the Chamber in 2016.
Hugo Motta, currently at -PB, is the favorite to lead the team from February onwards. During the period reported in the statement, Cunha was the president of the House and both were members of the PMDB.
Hugo Motta lost the fight for leadership on that occasion to Leonardo Picciani, from Rio de Janeiro.
presented in mid-2017, attributed irregularities to around 120 politicians and said it had raised R$270 million over a period of five years to share with supporters and allies, 70% via slush funds.
His reports were considered too superficial by investigators, and there was no agreement.
One of the documents with the proposal was shared between prosecutors who discussed the possibility of whistleblowing in a chat on the Telegram app, in July 2017, in the material obtained by
In the plea bargain proposal, Cunha states that he paid for the purchase of PMDB leadership in 2013 and 2016.
According to him, the dispute between Picciani and Hugo Motta in 2016 was the most expensive due to negotiations related to the composition of the then president’s Commission ().
As stated in the document shared by prosecutors, Cunha said that he had asked the J&F businessman for R$3 million to buy the election in favor of Hugo Motta and that this money would have been divided among six deputies.
He named former congressmen Anibal Gomes, Hermes Parcianello and Vitor Valim and deputy Alceu Moreira by name, and said he would still confirm the other two names.
When contacted through their advisors, Hugo Motta and Joesley Batista did not comment.
Parcianello, Valim and Alceu denied the former president of the Chamber’s report.
“I supported Picciani against Hugo. If Hugo asked me to vote, it was just hallway talk. A conversation like that [sobre dinheiro] I’ve never had it, far from it,” said Parcianello.
Valim stated that the report “is a big lie”. Alceu Moreira said that the accusation is not true, and that he never condoned acts of this nature.
The report was unable to locate Anibal Gomes.
Still according to Cunha’s proposal, Joesley would have known what the money was for and would have sent a person to indicate that an interlocutor would deliver the amounts in a supermarket in Rio, in cardboard boxes, to a man trusted by the then president of the Chamber. .
The delivery of the money, says the former president of the Chamber, would have taken place approximately 15 days before the election, just before Carnival 2016.
Also sought after by SheetEduardo Cunha stated that he does not have “any attachment of any accusation”.
“There is no document signed by me and no meeting between me and anyone on this topic. I do not recognize this as true and these facts did not exist,” he said.
However, he himself had already spoken publicly about plea bargaining — on more than one occasion.
In 2017, the former deputy blamed the then attorney general for the failure of his attempt to reach an agreement and said he had “milestone stories to tell.”
“What I have to say would shatter JBS’s plea and weaken Odebrecht’s”, when he was still in prison.
His defense told the Sheet in 2019 that the plea bargain proposal contained “robust elements in relation to numerous facts and people”, which could have helped a lot in several investigations. The former deputy was detained in a closed regime from October 2016 to March 2020. Subsequently, his Lava Jato convictions were annulled.
Still in 2019, the operation’s task force stated that there was consensus on the rejection of Cunha’s proposal among more than 20 prosecutors.
“Reports from employees assessed as inconsistent, incomplete or lacking evidence may be rejected. They may also be re-evaluated in new negotiation of an agreement, if the employee brings evidence”, informed the group.
The election for the PMDB leadership in 2016 was divided between the reappointment of Picciani, who was supported by Palácio do Planalto, and the choice of Hugo Motta, supported by Cunha. Picciani won by 37 votes, while the congressman from Paraíba had 30. Of the 71 deputies who could vote, two voted blank and two did not attend.
great repercussion at the time because it was seen as decisive for the articulation of Dilma’s removal, which ended up happening months later.
Cunha himself dedicates a chapter of his , in which he reports behind the scenes of the impeachment process, to the election of the party leadership. According to him, the Dilma government played hard against him and the defeat would have “tasted revenge” for the Executive.
Currently in his fourth term, Hugo Motta was removed from the so-called lower clergy of the Chamber (the group without national political expression) when Cunha took over the leadership of the PMDB in 2013.
There is another mention of him in Cunha’s Lava Jato plea bargain proposal. The former president of the Chamber listed the supporter as one of the beneficiaries of the campaign fundraising he organized in the 2014 election. There are, however, no details of the amounts or what the money would have been like.
In 2015, amid the political turmoil that would result in Dilma’s impeachment, Hugo Motta was placed as president of Petrobras’ CPI.
At the time, he hired one of the daughters of the then president of the Chamber, now congresswoman Dani Cunha (União Brasil-RJ), to provide him with communication services. The CPI was organized by Cunha and its main focus was the accusations against the PT arising from Lava Jato.
