In the first half of 2005, he hovered on Brasilia a climate of conspiracy and distrust, a typical restlessness of the eve of great crises.
He had been circulating in the capital rumors that the Government (PT), in its first term, paid allowance to allied deputies – the base was much more robust than the current one, at a time when the Planalto had much more control over the budget.
In September 2004, Jornal do Brasil about it, but the deputy Miro Teixeira (who had been the government leader and had left office allegedly bothered by the practice), the references attributed to him and only heard rumors about the case.
In May 2005, Veja magazine revealed a video in which the post office employee Maurício Marinho received $ 3,000 in bribes and said he had endorsed by the president of the PTB, the federal deputy, appointed as head of a scheme to charge commissions of entrepreneurs interested in bids and contracts in the state.
It was the password for the opposition to mobilize by a CPI to investigate the suspicions of. There was a war for the installation of the commission: gathered the necessary signatures, the government opened the safe in amendments to bury it.
In the midst of the dispute, Jefferson was on both sides and was cornered to the point of declaring support for the CPI, even if it was one of its targets and that the PTB integrated the governing coalition.
It was in this conflagrated climate that, on Saturday afternoon, June 4, the journalist, then editor of the Panel column, from Sheetreceived a call from Deputy Fluminense. Without giving details, Jefferson warned that he wanted to talk. Realizing the importance of the call, she traveled from Sao Paulo to Brasilia to, the next day, interview him.
“It was more or less clear that he was going to break with the government and, in this condition, reveal information about his relationship and negotiations with the Planalto Palace. But that he was going to talk about the allowance, I did not know,” says Lo Prete, today anchor of Jornal da Globo.
Because Jefferson spoke, and with rich detail, in one of the Sheet Monday 6 June ,. The neologism created to designate such a allowance – would baptize the scheme denounced by him and.
In the following weeks, the deputy-bomb would give other interviews to Lo Prete.
His revelations made the CPI inevitable and, associated with investigations of the Federal Police and the Public Prosecution Service and other confessions, resulted in a factual-evidential set that, especially the executive.
Pressured, Lula indirectly admitted the scheme, saying that he had been betrayed by allies.
Jefferson did not choose her for nothing. The deputy was the source of the columnist, who heard him carefully and devoted him of importance since the beginning of the crisis.
“He was not a guy treated as the first division in Brasilia by most journalists, because he had been Collor’s shock troop, already had a way of him. But it was a mistake to treat him that way,” says the journalist.
“Because he had a place of speech in that story: he was president of a base party, he had positions in government and direct dialogue with José Dirceu [ministro da Casa Civil]which did the government operation in Congress and the Government as a whole. “
Working on the panel, the backstage column of the policy that lover, requires, in her words, “intensive management of sources, you need to talk to people all the time.”
She emphasizes the importance of “reading the game” for this process, that is, the political analysis that pays beyond the little news. “Not only mine, but of the reporters who worked with me on the panel, Vera Magalhães, in Brasilia, and José Alberto Bombig, in São Paulo.”
“When the post office came, most were very detained in the episode of the bribe, and we started thinking about who was not appearing in history, other post office directors, what they were doing. We look at the case broader, and I think this look helped me open a channel with Roberto Jefferson, at a time when many people demanded this interview, but he was not talking.”
Jefferson decided to speak when he realized that Planalto had decided to abandon him, as he himself made it clear in the interview.
“I saw that the government acted to isolate the PTB. It will have to bleed someone’s head in the guillotine, there has to be meat and blood to the chakals. The ‘see’ said that I am the bomb man. And what do you do with the bomb? Or explod. Sheet.
The conversation took place at Jefferson’s functional apartment in Brasilia, accompanied by two deputy advisors. It lasted about an hour and a half. When he began to open the game about the scheme, Lo pretend to be rationally amazed.
“When he talks about the monthly, I still pay attention to what he is saying, but I already think things like: I had given me a page, I have to warn that I need two or three; it can’t be a headline of one line,” he recalls.
At a time when the internet did not even have a shadow of the current force, the time of completion of the print edition (or closure, in jargon) was a more exhaustive challenge. Lo Evil ran for the branch of Brasilia da Sheet To write your megafuro.
Before, it had to “take the tape” on the arm – this is, transcribing the audios, without apps or artificial intelligence as it is possible today -, when needed the help, the then reporter of the Eduardo Scolese branch – today policy editor of Sheet.
At the same time, it dealt with the organization of what had found with the Brazilian editor – as the policy editor was then called – Fernando de Barros e Silva.
The transcription work of the audios and newsroom of the report was at all times interrupted by a shrill sound. “The branch phones kept playing, even though it was a Sunday,” reports Lo Prea.
Just then she understood what happened: “It was the desperate government trying to know about the interview. Because Roberto Jefferson, in a moment of cruelty, shortly after I left his house, warned Aldo Rebelo, then Minister of Political Coordination, who had spoken with Sheet.”
The fact that he is staying in Brasilia at the same hotel as PT’s treasurer, Delúbio Soares – applied by Jefferson as responsible for paying the allowance – increased the tension and expectation on the eve of the publication, leading him to an unusual attitude.
“I got it on my head and slept with the ribbons [da entrevista]. I’m bed.
The short time available and the profusion of names involved caused the newspaper to choose exceptionally to publish the interview without additional checks and without listening to those mentioned before publication, option to date supported by Lo Prete.
“We had a testimony with that octane, from someone with a place of speech… you can fully decide to publish. SheetI say that no one has ever told me about holding on something that size and importance. Never. This possibility was not discussed that Sunday. “
The unfolding of the facts showed that Jefferson had no bluff. “The interviews are whole, anyone can take the exam. What he says proves. When he points out, for example, Dimas Toledo as amphibious operator, for the PSDB and for the PT, in Furnas, Dimas falls. The consequences were immediate,” says Lo Pena, that he would win the Esso Journalism award.
After complaint of the PGR (accepted in 2007 in the STF), the judgment of the defendants of the monthly only began in 2012.
Of the 40 accused, 24 were condemned, in a process that received criticism, especially from the PT, for the use of the “theory of the dominion of the fact”-that allows punishing someone for the influence on the criminal chain even without proof that he committed the crime himself-or the choice of judging them in the Supreme, since almost all defendants had no more special forum.
LO REJECTS the idea that there was Lawfare (use of justice for political persecution) in the monthly. “The investigation and trial of the monthly formed a building that stopped standing. They were not reviewed, like so many others we saw later.”
“These people have served pity, some have returned to politics, some not, but there was no undoing of the monthly as there was in the Lava Jato and how some forces are trying to do now with investigations into the attempted scam on January 8.”
Another point that distinguishes the mensalão of similar scandals, according to LO Prete, is that it was a case that was born in the press, and not from police investigations and or the prosecutor.
And how did you see Roberto Jefferson’s conversion to Bolsonarist extremism, who culminated in his arrest after?
“I think people are all together and mixed, always, that Roberto Jefferson of the monthly was inside him Roberto Jefferson of Collor’s Shock Troop and what would become Roberto Jefferson of Bolsonarism and receiving the police to bullet. I think you are making your way through life, things go wrong or right – in case of it very wrong – and certain aspects of yours are more evident. So for me it’s the same character, there is no conversion. “
