After the (Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry) on Organized Crime, ministers of the (Supreme Federal Court) want to impose stricter rules on breaches of confidentiality and custody of evidence in parliamentary investigations.
The guidelines would include delimiting a time interval for breaches of confidentiality (for example, prohibiting CPIs from accessing data from five or ten years ago), entrusting access to this information only to the top committee members (president and rapporteur) and prohibiting people outside the commission’s purpose from being called to testify.
The assessment is that the request for indictment of magistrates by the Organized Crime CPI, rejected on Tuesday (14), exposed the , as the initial scope was the advance of factions and militias in Brazil, which was relegated to the background. With the movement of opposition parliamentarians to create the Master Bank CPI, ministers believe that it is time to establish guidelines and prevent excesses.
The debate must be held by the STF plenary in an action that discusses the son of the president (PT), by the mixed CPI of the (National Social Security Institute). Although the commission has already concluded its work, this judgment is still pending and can be used to establish a general thesis.
The trial date will still be defined by the president of the court. He has signaled that this is a relevant discussion and that taking it to the plenary could be a nod to the group of ministers, and.
In a note on Tuesday, Fachin stated that he “emphatically repudiates” the mention of the three colleagues in the senator’s report (MDB-SE) and said that CPIs must act in a manner “circumscribed to the thematic relevance that gave rise to their creation”. For the president of the court, “”.
Throughout the day, two other ministers expressed concern about the thematic deviations of the CPIs: and . Together with the president of the STF and the three mentioned in the report, the calculation made behind the scenes at the court is that there would be a majority to stipulate the new set of rules.
The assessment made by this group of ministers is that, if in the pre-smartphone era the breach of telephone secrecy only covered calls made and received, today the same measure can lead a CPI to access an endless amount of private data, such as photos, videos and geolocation, in addition to financial and strictly personal information.
The case of the businessman, owner of , is frequently cited by Gilmar as an example of misconduct by parliamentarians. Coming from the former banker’s cell phone, sexual conversations with his then-girlfriend were unduly exposed, as they had no correlation with the financial fraud under investigation.
The judges understand that the law that regulates the activities of CPIs, which dates back to 1952, and the rules governing telephone interceptions, signed in 1996, are already obsolete and need to be updated in light of new technologies. A minister told Sheetwith reservation, that the good side of the crisis is the opportunity to promote new regulation.
Allowing, for example, that only the president and rapporteur of a CPI can access materials derived from breaches of confidentiality, acting as curators of this information, would be a way of preventing illegal leaks and facilitating the accountability of these parliamentarians in the event of any excess.
Gilmar prepared a representation with the PGR (Attorney General’s Office) so that Vieira could be investigated for abuse of authority. “This deviation from purpose raises concern. And this deviation from purpose is not something innocent. It is a crime”, in the session of the Second Panel.
STF ministers have issued decisions to block acts of CPIs considered inappropriate, such as breaches of confidentiality or approved en bloc. Investigates are also called as witnesses due to the right not to self-incriminate.
Parliamentarians complain about the STF and claim that the court’s decisions end up emptying the committees’ prerogatives. The president of the INSS mixed CPI, Carlos Viana, stated that the ministers’ recent understandings could invalidate “countless decisions taken by CPIs throughout history”, which would generate institutional insecurity.
Viana responded to the magistrates’ criticism of the Organized Crime CPI report and said that these demonstrations represent threats and attempts to embarrass him. “The people sitting on the Supreme Court do not own the country. […] I do not bow to the threat”, said the commission’s rapporteur.
