Friend of (PT), lawyer Marco Aurélio Carvalho, coordinator of the , makes harsh criticisms of the work of the , defending Fábio Luís Lula da Silva, the , son of the president, who has been investigated for alleged links with the fraud of the .
Carvalho, who was once —the body to which the PF is subordinate—, criticizes both what he called the creativity of the investigation, seeing signs of illicit acts that, for him, do not exist, and the leak of information about the case, which he classifies as criminal. He said, however, that he trusted the corporation and its leader, general director Andrei Rodrigues.
In an interview with Sheet on Friday (20), Lulinha’s lawyer drew parallels between the Lula and (PL) governments to say that, in the previous administration, there were episodes of violence in the PF, a State body, that do not occur now, but that members of the corporation are not fulfilling their role in the same republican way.
“The Federal Police, as a State institution, and like every institution, is in dispute. And this dispute is a reflection of the dispute that takes place in society itself, still divided by hatred and intolerance”, he stated. Carvalho works in Lulinha’s defense with lawyer Guilherme Suguimori.
“There are episodes of Lava Jato that are unfortunately being reproduced. I am absolutely sure, for the sake of the integrity of the corporation itself, that Andrei [Rodrigues] will take very energetic measures to get rid of these elements that call the institution’s credibility into question. I trust him. President Lula returned independence and autonomy to the Federal Police, and it needs to use this independence and autonomy responsibly,” he said.
The report sought out the Federal Police press office to comment on the lawyer’s statements, but the agency did not respond.
The lawyer vehemently denies that from the lobbyist Antônio Carlos Camilo Antunes, known as Careca of the INSS, resulting from the scheme of undue discounts on Brazilian pensions.
“There is no type of transfer, directly or indirectly. So much so that the Federal Police are trying to establish lines, let’s say, pyrotechnics, exaggeratedly creative, in a persecutory delirium that seems to have no end and takes us back to the worst thing in our Justice system. They shoot the arrow and paint the target. So, in this way, they never stop making mistakes. They started at the end: wanting to convict”, said Carvalho.
“No one wants Fábio to be above the law. But we cannot allow him to be treated as if he were below it.”
The PF is investigating whether Lulinha received amounts from Careca from the INSS through a mutual friend, businesswoman Roberta Luchsinger, the target of an operation in December. The three meet: at her invitation, in 2024 to visit a cannabidiol project in Careca.
One of the PF’s suspicions is that Lulinha would receive an allowance of R$300,000 through her friend. According to , the PF is investigating transfers to a travel agency, and a report suggests that his move to Spain last year could be for one . As revealed by Sheetin January this year.
Carvalho counters all points. “There was not even a single transfer,” stated the lawyer, referring to amounts coming from Careca or Luchsinger.
According to his analysis, this would have been proven, since the statements would not record transfers in this sense. “The criminal data leak was revealing and reassuring,” he said.
Regarding the trip with Careca, in 2024, he repeated previous information that Lulinha was not aware of the lobbyist’s illicit activities and went to visit a cannabidiol farm because he had a family member with epilepsy who uses the substance. “We said this voluntarily and spontaneously to Minister André Mendonça, before we were even asked about it.”
The financial movement reported in Lulinha’s accounts, of R$19.5 million over four years, is also disputed. “Coaf does not separate what is input and what is output” and doubles the amounts for each transfer between accounts of the same holder, said the lawyer. The real value would be around R$5 million over four years — part of Marisa Letícia’s inheritance, part of loans made to President Lula when he was in prison.
The suspicion of tax evasion is also rejected by the lawyer, who says that Lulinha had been preparing to move to Madrid since 2023, a year before the investigations.
Luchsinger’s defense sent a petition to the STF, obtained by Sheetquestioning the leak of information about the case. In the document, the defense highlights that the transfers from her company to the travel agency mentioned by the PF took place between December 2023 and June 2024, while the contract between her company and Careca’s was only signed in December 2024. Based on this, the defense maintains that the premise that triangulation would constitute money laundering would be false.
Last December, Lula commented on the suspicions that were forming about his son’s connection to INSS fraud. “If my son is involved in this, he will be investigated.”
“That’s the difference between a statesman, President Lula, and a militiaman, former president Jair Bolsonaro: one interfering in investigations to shield the family, the other asking his son to make himself available to the STF”, stated Carvalho, in reference to suspicions of interference in the PF in the investigation against Senator Flávio Bolsonaro (PL-RJ) in the case of the “rachadinhas”.
For Carvalho, exposure forced by research can have a paradoxical effect. “If before it was a problem, today it can be a solution [para Lula]”, he stated. “If the opposition thought it had a silver bullet, perhaps now it has realized that it has a blank bullet.”
