A Brazilian judge filed an open investigation against former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva for alleged crimes of corruption and influence peddling. The decision of the magistrate Maria Carolina Ayoub, of São Paulo, represents a new victory in the courts for the former head of state and also clears his path towards the candidacy even more ahead of the presidential elections of October 2022, for which opinion polls place him as the top favorite ahead of President Jair Bolsonaro.
In this case, Lula was accused of influencing leaders of Costa Rica so that they closed business with the Brazilian construction company OAS, one of the companies involved in the vast diversions of public resources of the state oil company Petrobras. The events would have occurred in 2011, when Lula was no longer president of Brazil.
The investigation was based mainly on the testimony of the former president of OAS, Léo Pinheiro, and also reached the then president of the Lula Institute, Paulo Okamoto. However, Judge Ayoub decided to archive the case because, on the one hand, there are not enough elements to continue with the investigation and, on the other, some of the crimes that could be configured have already been prescribed for Lula.
According to Lula’s defense, the Brazilian justice has already filed 19 “investigation procedures” instituted against the leader of the Workers’ Party (PT) linked to Operation Lava Jato, which uncovered the corruption in Petrobras.
They also remarked that in Lula currently only faces one case in court in which he is also accused of using his influence so that the government of Dilma Rousseff (2011-2016), his successor in the presidency, attributed to the Swedish company Saab a tender for the purchase of 36 combat aircraft.
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