The Court of Ethics and Discipline of -SP (Brazilian Bar Association, São Paulo Section) considered that the conduct of a lawyer who promotes, finances or provides benefits, facilities or material advantages to judges is incompatible with ethics.
The opinion is from TED’s First Professional Ethics Panel, which analyzes, in theory, ethical-disciplinary matters. Understanding does not focus on a specific case, but on the hypothesis in which a situation could fit.
The decision considers this type of conduct an “affront to the principles of professional independence, the dignity of the legal profession, the prohibition against the use of undue influence and the duty to safeguard the reputation of the class”. The same goes for offering advantages to congressmen and members of the .
The consultation made to the class dealt with: financing or costing national or international trips to conferences, seminars and courses; offering or paying for parties, gatherings or events; granting rides, transportation or travel on private aircraft; or other equivalent material or logistical advantages.
As the Sheet in February, the debate takes place on a private jet accompanied by lawyer Augusto de Arruda Botelho, one of those involved in the . The criminalist does not comment on the matter.
More recently the Sheet showed that companies belonging to the former banker, Banco Master, or linked to him, as documents indicate, while belonging to a lawyer linked to the trial that participated in the (Superior Electoral Court).
“Institutional independence requires that the lawyer not only be independent, but that he appear independent — that is, that his conduct does not generate, in the reasonable perception of an informed external observer, the impression of undue proximity to public agents invested with decision-making power”, wrote the report’s rapporteur, Edson Junji Torihara.
According to him, the fact that there is no pending case between the lawyer and the benefited public agent is not a sufficient circumstance to remove the ethical prohibition.
“The legal relationship is dynamic: lawsuits can arise at any time, and the previously created bond will persist when this occurs. The repeated granting of benefits, even in periods without litigation, builds a relational pattern that, when analyzed together, reveals the ability to influence”, he says.
“Benefits of significant value — such as international travel and the use of private aircraft — transcend mere social courtesy and enter the field of relevant patrimonial advantage. Even if the benefiting lawyer does not have an ongoing case, other lawyers from the same firm or from associated firms may have one, and the proximity of one contaminates the perception of everyone.”
Conduct prohibited due to ethical incompatibility, according to opinion
Conduct that constitutes a direct personal benefit granted by the lawyer to the public agent is ethically prohibited, including:
1. Cost of national or international travel by the lawyer or his office, regardless of whether there is an ongoing process;
2. Offering transportation on private aircraft, outside of emergency situations;
3. Organization or financing of parties, gatherings or social events aimed at specific public agents;
4. Granting of any relevant financial advantage that creates relational asymmetry between the lawyer and other professionals;
5. Individualized invitations to private or restricted-access events, which create non-institutional proximity;
6. Any benefit that, due to habituality or economic value, is capable of generating moral obligation, embarrassment or bond of gratitude.
