Brazil’s supreme court upholds decision annulling Lula conviction

Brazil’s full Supreme Court upheld a ruling Thursday annulling former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s corruption convictions, which cleared the way for him to run for a new presidential term next year.

In an 8-3 ruling, the court upheld Justice Edson Fachin’s March 8 decision quashing Lula’s convictions on procedural grounds, which has upended Brazilian politics as far-right President Jair Bolsonaro gears up to seek reelection in October 2022.

“Thank you to the Brazilian people! #LulaInnocent,” the leftist leader’s Workers’ Party wrote on Twitter.

The ruling, which was made on procedural grounds, does not find Lula innocent. But it essentially puts prosecutors back to square one by sending the cases to another court.

Lula, the popular but tarnished leftist who led Brazil through an economic boom from 2003 to 2010, was jailed in 2018 on charges of taking bribes from companies seeking juicy contracts at state oil giant Petrobras.

The cases felled him just as he was gearing up to seek a new presidential term, in elections Bolsonaro ultimately won.

Lula maintains he is innocent and that the case against him was a conspiracy to sideline him politically.

“A historic day. It took a long time, but it arrived,” tweeted the president of Lula’s party, Gleisi Hoffmann.

“Thank you to everyone who stood by us during this struggle.”

Judge accused of bias

The charges against Lula grew out of “Operation Car Wash,” an investigation that blew the lid off a massive corruption scheme in which top politicians and business executives systematically siphoned billions of dollars from Petrobras.

Fachin ruled the court in the southern state of Parana that handled the Car Wash cases did not have jurisdiction for Lula’s charges because they were not directly related to the Petrobras scheme.

He ordered the four cases—two convictions and two pending judgments—transferred to another court in Brasilia…..read more

 

Source: AFP

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