The Second Panel of the STF (Supreme Federal Court) granted a habeas corpus to stop criminal proceedings against the player Igor Cariús. The ministers assessed that forcing a single yellow card does not change the course of a competition.
The decision applies to the specific case, but establishes a precedent regarding the court’s understanding of the matter.
According to Gilmar Mendes, who cast the winning vote, the player’s conduct is reprehensible, but the General Sports Law defines it as a crime to ask for or accept an advantage with the promise of altering or falsifying the result of the competition.
He was accompanied by Dias Toffoli. Kassio Nunes Marques and Luiz Fux, who are also members of the panel, did not participate in the trial this Tuesday (2).
The athlete defended Cuiabá during the period of the events reported by the Public Ministry and today plays for Sport.
“The conduct relating to the provocation of a single yellow card, as attributed to the patient, is not capable of altering or falsifying the result of the sporting competition or event associated with it, which in my opinion undermines the accusatory hypothesis due to manifest atypicality. Sports competition is broader than the score of a match”, said Gilmar.
The case’s rapporteur, André Mendonça, voted to deny the player’s request to stop the criminal action as he understood that there was evidence of authorship and materiality in the case for the opening of the criminal action. He was defeated.
The 6th Panel of the STJ (Superior Court of Justice) had understood that, although a yellow card does not have the capacity to directly change the score of a football game, according to the specific regulations of the 2022 Brazilian Championship, the championship in question, the number of yellow cards is a tiebreaker for the purpose of final classification, being able to define relegated teams, for example.
According to Gilmar Mendes, however, there are seven tiebreaker criteria: highest number of wins, highest goal difference, highest number of pro goals, direct confrontation, lowest number of red cards received, lowest number of cards received and draw.
“I do not consider that the conduct actually attributed to the patient, regarding obtaining a single yellow card, has the ability to influence the final classification of the championship, either given the quantitative inexpressiveness of the conduct, or due to the tiebreaker criteria, the sixth of seven tiebreaker criteria ahead of the draw alone,” said the minister.
According to the accusation, he agreed to receive R$30,000 to force yellow cards in three rounds of the championship. In one of them, the attempt was cancelled. The next time it would have been implemented.
“I think that this is a situation that subjects the patient to unequivocal illegal constraint, not only due to the absence of just cause for the exercise of criminal action, but also because the persistence of criminal prosecution in this type results in a violation of the principle of legality”, said Gilmar Mendes.
Igor was punished for the facts reported. He was away from the field for a year by decision of the STJD (Superior Court of Sports Justice).
“There is no doubt as to the reprehensibility of the patient’s conduct, nor that the conduct described pays attention to the integrity of the sporting competition in question. For any conduct to have criminal relevance, however, there must be prior legal prosecution, which does not seem to be the case”, concluded the minister.
