A procedure that had been archived for three years at the STF (Supreme Federal Court) was reactivated in a request that led to a decision by Minister Gilmar Mendes in favor of the family of colleague Dias Toffoli.
When filing the request to suspend its order by the CPI (Parliamentary Inquiry Commission) for Organized Crime, Maridt Participações chose a writ of mandamus already filed in court, under Gilmar’s report. The strategy of the company, whose partners are relatives of Toffoli, meant that the request was directed to the dean of the court, who ordered the suspension, this Friday (27).
Toffoli confirmed two weeks ago that he is also part of the company’s corporate structure, which was one of the owners of the Tayayá resort, in Paraná.
The writ of mandamus had been filed with the Supreme Court by Brasil Paralelo in the context of Covid’s CPI, in 2021. At the time, the Bolsonarista video producer of the investigation and managed to suspend breaches of confidentiality approved by the collegiate. Now, Maridt filed its request in this same action, claiming the same type of benefit.
In other words, it appealed to a process that had already been archived, presenting arguments similar to those supported by Brasil Paralelo almost five years earlier. The initiative prevented the distribution of the request by lottery or the request from being sent, as a precaution, to the office of minister André Mendonça, rapporteur of the Banco Master case at the STF.
“The preliminary decision given by Your Excellency in the present case [do mandato de segurança original] reaffirmed the jurisdictional syndication of acts carried out by Parliamentary Commissions of Inquiry, despite their constitutional stature, especially when they involve breach of confidentiality and possible affront to fundamental rights”, argued Maridt’s lawyers in the habeas corpus.
The company maintained that “during the course of the commission’s work, requests (already approved) arose that were completely out of line with the defined object, distorting the prerogatives granted to the CPIs to violate constitutional guarantees, unduly expanding the restricted object of the commission and determining unfounded, disproportionate and disconnected measures from the commission’s object”.
Gilmar recognized habeas corpus and suspended this Friday the breach of Maridt’s banking, tax and telematic secrecy, according to the column by journalist Mônica Bergamo. The secrecy had been broken by the Organized Crime CPI on Wednesday (25), under the justification of investigating a fund linked to Master’s former banker.
In Gilmar Mendes’ decision, the minister mentions that the breach of confidentiality was “deprived of suitability due to the complete and absolute absence of valid grounds”. The judge also considers that the commission “did not even point out any type of connection between the postulated measures and the real and effectively delimited object at the time of its establishment.”
He adds: “The request alludes to facts involving other investigations, parallel and disconnected from the object of the CPI.”
The minister determined that “the bodies, companies and entities receiving such orders immediately refrain from forwarding any information and data based on the request”. He also ordered that, “if information or data has already been forwarded”, they must be immediately rendered unusable or destroyed, “under penalty of criminal and administrative liability”.
CRITIQUES
For Francisco Monteiro Rocha, lawyer and professor of criminal law at UFPR (Federal University of Paraná), the decision is absurdly heterodox.
“An absolute affront to natural justice, a bizarre decision, but as we are talking about the STF and they have the last word, it will probably be taken to the plenary and the political circumstances there will mean that this is, once again, approved.”
According to Rocha, this is the type of request that would probably receive “an inelegant order” from magistrates, if formulated by the lawyer of any party, with answers such as: “I don’t know because it is clearly unenforceable.”
Law professor at ESPM (Escola Superior de Propaganda e Marketing) Ana Laura Pereira Barbosa also sees the decision as unusual, from the point of view of the way it was obtained. As for the merits, she says that the argument is more plausible, because the Supreme Court has jurisprudence controlling requests for breach of confidentiality.
“What strikes me most about the decision is the procedural heterodoxy,” she says. “It seems to me that this procedural departure may have been a strategy by Maridt to avoid random distribution.”
Toffoli left the Master case report two weeks ago, pressured by a PF report pointing out his links to the investigation. Previously, Gilmar had already publicly defended his colleague from criticism for continuing to conduct the case.
