2024-02-17 00:43:28
Measures must still be taken to clarify why department leaders did not make public what was said at the meeting
São Paulo, 16 – The ministerial meeting that took place on July 5, 2022 called by Jair Bolsonaro (PL), then President of the Republic, was recorded at his command and became part of the Federal Police (PF) investigation investigating the attempt to coup d’etat. Experts interviewed by Estadão state that attendance at the meeting, in itself, does not constitute the attribution of a crime to the participants. They assess, however, that measures must still be taken to clarify why the leaders of the departments did not make public what was said at the coup-related meeting.
The video released by the Minister of the Federal Supreme Court (STF) Alexandre de Moraes on the 9th shows a table that holds around 35 plaques, naming the participants of the official meeting. Operation Tempus Veritatis, launched on the 8th by the PF, carried out 33 search and seizure warrants and four preventive arrest warrants for high-ranking military personnel, former advisors and former ministers of Bolsonaro. Among ministers and advisors, of the 28 participants in the meeting identified by Estadão, eight were targets of the operation.
Criminal lawyer and professor at Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV), Celso Vilardi believes that the participants may be involved in the crime of malfeasance, provided for in article 319 of the Penal Code, which occurs when a public official “delays or fails to perform an official act” to meet personal interests or feelings.
“This meeting is, in fact, evidence of the existence of a coup, but the investigation is not yet complete so that it can be said that other people participated in this attempt,” said Vilardi. For him, the line of investigation is correct so far, but it needs to be deepened so that other possible suspects are revealed. “It is premature to say that people, due to that meeting, were aware, stopped practicing or communicating something, an act of office that they should have done.”
In the same vein, criminal lawyer Antonio Carlos de Almeida Castro, known as Kakay, maintains that, despite the meeting being criminal due to its coup-like nature, it is necessary for each participant to be summoned to testify and clarify the reasons for not having reported what it was said there.
“Of course, it is assumed that the people who were there and who did not speak out were, at the very least, agreeing with what was being plotted there. So, it seems obvious to me that they should be investigated.” However, subordination and fear of punishment applied by the boss may be reasons given by ministers to justify silence.
As this is a very broad investigation, Kakay analyzes that a more restrictive measure once morest people who were at the meeting, without any other connection with the other facts, would not be correct from a legal point of view. For the lawyer, it is necessary to listen one by one and evaluate each case.
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For Miguel Reale Júnior, former professor of criminal law at the University of São Paulo (USP) and Minister of Justice in the Fernando Henrique Cardoso government, there was no suggestion of a concrete action for a coup, but rather the creation of “a atmosphere of resentment, which is the tactic of the extreme right”, citing topics such as abortion, communism and other topics raised at the meeting.
Therefore, those who were present might not be accused of any crime, even if it was omission, because, according to him, the threats remained on a “generic level”. For Reale, the recording of the meeting is essential as an element of evidence for the “whole work”.
At the meeting, Bolsonaro encouraged his team to spread misinformation regarding the electoral process and said that it was not the case that then Defense Minister Paulo Sérgio Nogueira “put troops on the streets, set fire to them and machine-gun them”.
When the former minister of the Institutional Security Office (GSI), General Augusto Heleno, started a topic regarding possible work that the Brazilian Intelligence Agency (Abin) would be doing, Bolsonaro cut him off and said that the matter would be dealt with privately by the two.
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The meeting participants investigated by the PF are: Anderson Torres, Augusto Heleno, Jair Bolsonaro, Marcelo Câmara, Mário Fernandes, Mauro Cid, Paulo Sérgio Nogueira and Walter Braga Netto
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