MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Brazil Justice minister Moro granted a five-day leave of absence
Jair Bolsonaro approved the break, from 15-19 July, for Moro to “deal with personal matters”, according to an official government document Brazil’s justice minister, Sérgio Moro, has been granted a leave of absence following a slew of damaging leaks that have cast serious doubts over his impartiality as a judge in a sweeping graft scandal.
Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s president, approved the break, from 15-19 July, for Moro to “deal with personal matters”, according to an official government document published on Monday.
The ministry said Moro will be on holiday, but analysts speculated Moro’s job was threatened following leaked cell phone chats which showed that as a judge, he guided prosecutors in the investigation which led to the imprisonment of powerful businessmen and politicians including the former Workers’ party president Lula da Silva.
The leaks, published since 9 June by the Intercept with some of Brazil’s major media outlets, have unleashed a political storm.
“It’s not common for ministers to take leave of absence,” said Jairo Nicolau, a professor of political science at Rio’s Getulio Vargas Foundation, a business school. “Moro’s situation is getting more and more difficult.”
Moro became a national hero for his role in Operation Car Wash. In July 2017, he jailed Lula, who was then barred from last year’s presidential elections.
Soon after Bolsonaro won the presidency, Moro accepted the job as justice minister. He has maintained that the conversations showed no wrongdoing, describing them as a “criminal attack” and suggesting they had been doctored.
During a grilling in congress, Moro refused to comment on a report that federal police had asked a finance ministry money laundering unit to investigate the American journalist Glenn Greenwald, the co-founder of the Intercept.
On Monday, Brazil’s federal court of accounts said it would give the unit 24-hours to explain the supposed investigation which it called “persecution and abuse of power, to intimidate the journalist” and a waste of public money.
Bolsonaro took minister Moro onto the pitch at Sunday’s final of the Copa América to test his popularity.
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Read all commentsFive days? More probably five centuries.
Jul 11th, 2019 - 02:08 am 0What would ANYONE expect, after gifting the keys of the safe to a bunch of thugs?
Jul 11th, 2019 - 11:16 am 0https://politica.estadao.com.br/noticias/geral,maia-diz-que-nao-e-exagero-fundo-de-r-3-7-bi-para-eleicoes-em-2020,70002916125?utm_source=twitter:newsfeed&utm_medium=social-organic&utm_campaign=redes-sociais:072019:e&utm_content=:::&utm_term=
The Brazilian Earthquake
Jul 15th, 2019 - 06:00 pm 0by PEPE ESCOBAR
The public prosecutors of the two-year-old Car Wash investigation maintain there are “elements of proof” implicating Lula in receiving funds — at least 1.1 million euros — from the dodgy kickback scheme involving major Brazilian construction companies connected to Petrobras. Lula might — and the operative word is “might” — have personally profited from it mostly in the form of a ranch (which he does not own), a relatively modest seaside apartment, speaking fees in the global lecture circuit, and donations to his charity.
This is the stuff Hollywood is made of. And that was exactly the logic behind the elaborate production.
Yet it gets curiouser and curiouser when we learn that judge Moro wrote an article in an obscure magazine way back in 2004 (in Portuguese only, titled Considerations about Mani Pulite, CEJ magazine, issue number 26, July/September 2004), where he clearly extols “authoritarian subversion of juridical order to reach specific targets ” and using the media to intoxicate the political atmosphere.
And that leads us towards the nasty scenario of a made in Brazil media-judicial-police complex possibly hijacking one of the healthiest democracies in the world. And that is supported by a stark fact: the right-wing Brazilian opposition’s entire “project” boils down to ruining the economy of the 7th largest global economic power to justify the destruction of Lula as a presidential candidate in 2018.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2016/03/08/the-brazilian-earthquake/
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