Brazilian politics can sometimes be confusing to the outsider – but this story is actually quite simple. It goes like this: the men who tried to kill Lula’s worst enemy are from a criminal faction tied to Lula’s party, had a Lula-related email on their phone, and one of them once even used the same lawyer as one of Lula’s sons.
First-term Senator Sérgio Moro was the Federal Judge that convicted Lula and sent him to prison for corruption charges. 3 years later, Lula was freed by a controversial decision by the Supreme Court, and won another presidential mandate in a highly disputed election.
‘In a mega-operation launched this Wednesday morning (22), the Federal Police took to the streets to arrest members of the First Command of the Capital (PCC), one of the largest criminal factions in the country.
Investigations by the agency point out that the criminals intended to kidnap and kill Senator Sergio Moro (União Brasil-PR), a former Lava Jato judge.
[…] In all, around 120 police officers serve 21 search and seizure warrants, seven of which are for preventive arrest and four for temporary arrest in the states of São Paulo, Paraná, Mato Grosso do Sul and Rondônia.’
The ‘operation Sequaz’ has so far arrested 9 people involved in the plan to kill Senator Sergio Moro, that cost about R$ 5 million.
‘[…] Criminals from the faction rented residential and commercial properties near Moro addresses in Curitiba. The bandits photographed the family’s daily life: school, gym, shopping in malls and work meetings.’
Lula and his Workers’ Party (PT) have long and credibly been reported to maintain close ties with the largest Brazilian criminal faction, the PCC. Fuelling the suspicions against Lula is also the fact that he openly spoke to the press just days earlier about his time in prison during which he had one goal:
“Once in a while a lawyer would come, […] to visit, to see if everything was all right. […] I would answer: ‘It’s not okay, it will only be okay when I f*ck this Moro’.”
But the ‘coincidences’ keep coming fast and hard: the data recovered from a cell phone from the primary suspect Patric Uelinton Salomão includes the chip code, the so-called IMEI, and email addresses, including one called ‘[email protected]’ (FreeLula1063).
Now, a bombshell report reveals that, although Brazil has more than 1.4 million licensed lawyers, the PCC member had, at one time, used the same lawyer that managed to free Lula’s son from corruption charges for having received over 100 million Reals (around US$20 million) from Oi/Telemar telecom company.
‘Patric Uelinton Salomão left prison at the beginning of last year, thanks to a release permit obtained in São Paulo justice by the same lawyer who freed one of the sons of president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) from a Operation Lava Jato action.’
While this kind of suspicion on a head of state may sound forced to some, it bears remembering that this is not the first time that Lula has been involved in this kind of suspicion.
In 2003, during his first mandate, Lula was accused, by family members of São Caetano Mayor Celso Daniel, of involvement in his kidnapping and assassination, and also of tampering with the investigations. Arrested for corruption, and turned state witness, Whistleblower Marcos Valério went as far as say Lula masterminded the crime.
