The president of the (Supreme Federal Court), denied one that sought to suspend the effects of a decision by the minister regarding the company Maridt Participações, which also has minister Dias Toffoli among its partners.
Fachin maintained Gilmar’s order to annul the breach of Maridt’s banking, tax, telephone and telematic secrecy was valid. had approved measures to access the company’s data, claiming there were signs of financial irregularities, possible money laundering practices and connections with people under investigation.
Maridt, however, which has Toffoli’s brothers as partners, questioned the measure in the STF, and the case ended up in the hands of Gilmar Mendes. The minister granted, on his own initiative, a habeas corpus in favor of the company, annulling the CPI’s decisions, on the grounds that there was an irregularity in the way the breaches of confidentiality were determined.
In view of this, the CPI asked the president of the STF to suspend the effects of Gilmar’s decision, on the grounds that it caused harm to the investigations and could compromise the collection of evidence.
The president of the STF did not assess whether Gilmar’s decision was correct or not. Instead, he made a technical note about the “suspension of injunction” presented by the CPI, a legal alternative that is used for specific situations, which aim to prevent judicial decisions from causing serious damage to public order, the economy or security, for example.
Fachin declared that this tool does not function as a common resource and cannot be used to review individual decisions within the court. The president of the court also stated that it is not up to him, as a kind of higher court, to review what another minister decided.
“As a rule, a request for suspension of a decision handed down by a Minister of the Federal Supreme Court is not permitted”, stated Fachin, when denying the claim, without going into the analysis of the merits itself. Gilmar Mendes’ decision, therefore, continues to be fully valid.
In a parallel procedure, Fachin forwarded another petition from the commission to the case’s rapporteur, Minister Gilmar Mendes, to provide clarification.
Questions about the minister’s connections with, owner of, have grown since the first relationship between the two was revealed by Sheetin January, and can be answered throughout the Federal Police investigation into the case.
The minister is not investigated by the PF — this could only happen with authorization from the Supreme Court itself. However,, researchers they suspect financial crimes in funds linked to the Tayayá resort, of which the magistrate’s family is a former partner, and are moving forward with the investigation.
Senator Fabiano Contarato (PT-ES), president of the CPI on Organized Crime, stated this Saturday (28) that Fachin’s decision “limits the progress of investigations and directly impacts the exercise of the constitutional prerogatives of the CPIs, which have their own powers of judicial authority, as per the understanding already consolidated by the STF”.
The CPI, according to the senator, will appeal the decision, with the expectation that the court’s plenary will reestablish the parliamentarians’ collegial decision. “As part of the request for redistribution presented by the CPI (PET 15615), in which Minister Edson Fachin ordered Minister Gilmar Mendes to speak about the distribution of the process, the Presidency of the Commission trusts that the distortion of the distribution system will be duly corrected”, stated Contarato.
The PF elaborated on the relationships between Toffoli and Vorcaro and delivered the document to the president of the STF, Edson Fachin, in February. The PF’s findings were not enough for Fachin to authorize an investigation against the minister, but they caused the departure of , which was handed over to minister André Mendonça. Now, any progress in the investigations against Toffoli will depend on Mendonça’s decisions.
The partnership in the resort located in Rio Claro (PR) began in September 2021, when Maridt Participações SA, the minister’s company, sold half of its stake in the project to the Arleen investment fund. This fund is part of an extensive chain of funds used by Master, according to investigations by the PF and the Central Bank.
Maridt left the partnership in the companies that make up the Tayayá group in February last year, when the remainder of its stake was acquired by businessman Paulo Humberto Barbosa.
Barbosa is a lawyer from Goiás who worked several times for JBS, a company in the J&F group. When he bought Arleen’s stake in Tayayá, the fund no longer belonged to Zettel, but to Alberto Leite, a businessman friend of Toffoli who held shares in the fund for less than a year.
At the time of the revelation of SheetMinister Dias Toffoli did not say that he was also a partner at Maridt. He only made the revelation on February 12, after the PF produced a report on relations between Toffoli and Vorcaro.
Maridt, said Toffoli in a note sent to Sheet last week, it is a family business, constituted as a private limited company, registered with the Commercial Board and providing annual declarations to the Federal Revenue Service.
“Its declarations to the IRS, as well as those of its shareholders, have always been duly approved,” he stated.
“Minister Dias Toffoli is part of the corporate structure, with the aforementioned company being managed by relatives of the minister”, he added, which is permitted by the Organic Law of the Judiciary.
Regarding the sales of shares in Tayayá to the Arleen fund and to Paulo Humberto, Toffoli stated that “everything was duly declared to the Brazilian Federal Revenue Service and that all sales were made within the market value”.
