Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva

By 3 votes to 2, the Second Panel of the Brazilian Supreme Court declared in a trial that former federal judge Sergio Moro acted with partiality in sentencing former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in the case of the triplex of Guaruja.
The Supreme Court decision nullifies the triplex case, which will need to start over.

Justice Edson Fachin of the Federal Supreme Court overturned on Monday 8 all the condemnations imposed on former President Lula during the Operation Car Wash (Operação Lava Jato). According to Fachin, the Federal Justice of Paraná, responsible for the convictions at first instance, is incompetent to judge the Guarujá triplex, the Atibaia site and the Lula Institute cases.

In 2017, the then judge Sergio Moro sentenced Lula to 9 years and 6 months in prison for passive corruption and money laundering in the case of a triplex flat. Lula, however, denies that he benefited from the flat and is trying to prove in court the suspicion of Moro - who a few years later became Minister of Justice and Public Safety in the government of Jair Bolsonaro.

With the decision, the cases will be analyzed by the Federal Court of the Federal District, which will have the autonomy to decide whether to maintain the convictions already imposed or send the cases to the criminal investigation stage.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the former president of Brazil, has publicly called for the impeachment of current president Jair Bolsonaro. In a call with CNN from his self-quarantine at home after he recently got out of jail, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva criticized how Bolsonaro handles the Covid-19 pandemic as well as the economic collapse of the country.