This Wednesday, the Federal Police carried out a new operation to investigate the alleged leak of information from the Federal Revenue of ministers of the Federal Supreme Court (STF) and their families. This is the second phase of Operation Exfil, carried out on February 17th this year.
One preventive arrest warrant and six search and seizure warrants, authorized by the STF, were served in the states of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.
In the first phase, the focus was “to investigate the transfer of tax documents subject to legal protection and obtained criminally for remuneration”, informed the PF.
At the time, four search and seizure warrants were executed in the states of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Bahia. Precautionary measures were also determined, such as removal from public office, cancellation of passports, monitoring by electronic ankle bracelet and ban on leaving the country.
GLOBO found that there was irregular access to the tax information of Minister Alexandre de Moraes’ wife, Viviane Barci.
The investigation was ordered by Minister Alexandre de Moraes. In January of this year, he ordered the opening of a procedure to determine whether there was a leak of confidential data from Court ministers and their families at the Federal Revenue Service and the Financial Activities Control Council (Coaf).
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The opening of the investigation took place amid the developments in a report that mentions Banco Master’s contract with the office of Moraes’ wife, Viviane Barci. In December, Malu Gaspar’s column revealed that, over three years, the contract would total R$131.3 million.
Previously, columnist Lauro Jardim had reported that the service provision contract had been seized in a Federal Police (PF) operation.
Also in December, Malu Gaspar reported that Moraes sought out the president of the Central Bank, Gabriel Galípolo, at least four times to put pressure on Banco Master.
At least three of the contacts were by telephone, but at least once Moraes met in person with Galípolo to talk about the problems at Daniel Vorcaro’s bank.
This is not the first recent episode in which the STF and the IRS disagree on the use of tax data involving authorities.
In 2019, Moraes himself ordered the suspension of a series of IRS tax investigations that affected Court ministers and other authorities, citing “indications of misuse of purpose” in the direction of the investigations, and temporarily removed two civil servants on suspicion of undue breach of confidentiality.
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At the time, the Supreme Court understood that there was not enough evidence of irregularity on the part of taxpayers to justify the fiscal profligacy promoted by the body.
The 2019 decision was handed down in the context of a broader investigation, opened by the then president of the STF, minister Dias Toffoli, to investigate fake news and threats against the Court, and included the order to halt investigations that allegedly accessed data without due evidence of irregularity.
