Thanks to the annulment of the process ordered by the minister of the (Supreme Federal Court), the former manager of Roberto Gonçalves, who had been sentenced to prison, obtained back R$26.5 million that had been repatriated from Switzerland and had been blocked in court.
The transfer of the amount that was in the escrow account was made last Thursday (18). The repatriation of the amounts to Brazil, which involved payments from construction companies, had taken place in 2020, after international cooperation with Swiss authorities.
In September, Dias Toffoli had already decided to nullify all acts in the former executive’s process. He said that the case has the same situation as another action that had already been annulled previously. “Both complaints are objectively identical,” the magistrate wrote.
Decisions of the type made by the STF minister have previously benefited, among others, businessman Marcelo Odebrecht and money changer.
Toffoli has annulled a series of Lava Jato acts, under two main justifications: the allegation of collusion between the then judge Sergio Moro and the prosecutors and also the use in the complaints of elements of the collaboration agreement that were considered invalid by the court.
Gonçalves’ case differs from others, however, because the criminal action had already been processed regularly in all instances of the Judiciary, exhausting resources. In 2024, the STF itself, in an appeal reported by the minister, decided to maintain the sentence of 17 years and nine months in prison. On that occasion, Toffoli followed the rapporteur’s vote.
However, in September, he decided to comply with the defense’s request in another parallel procedure and declared the annulment.
According to the sentence in the case, issued in 2017 by Sergio Moro, Gonçalves received bribes from Odebrecht and the construction company UTC when he held the position of executive manager of the engineering and services area at Petrobras, between 2011 and 2012.
The ruling states that US$4.1 million was paid into accounts in Switzerland. At the time, the then magistrate reduced the sentence stating that the former executive recognized the practice of . In testimony at the time, the defendant said he had not done anything at the state-owned company in exchange for the payments.
Authorities, via international cooperation, informed Brazil in 2015 of the existence of accounts attributed to the executive.
The accused spent three years in a closed regime. In June of this year, federal judge Guilherme Borges, currently responsible for the operation in Paraná, ordered the prison to serve the definitive sentence, but accepted a request for the defendant to be placed under home detention, with an electronic ankle monitor.
With the new decision of the Supreme Court, in October the Execution Court, in Rio de Janeiro, decided on the release.
The release of the withheld money took longer because Petrobras was trying to maintain the blockade to guarantee possible compensation through an action for misconduct. But Toffoli issued a new decision also rejecting continuing with this other process. The executive’s defense had complained of disrespect for the decision issued by the Supreme Court.
Petrobras had asked Toffoli, at the beginning of the month, that the (Attorney General’s Office) be notified regarding measures regarding collaboration with Switzerland in this case.
