Parliamentary commission of inquiry into plea bargains, now!

Although paragraph 16 of article 4 of the Law dealing with criminal organizations (Law No. 12.850 of 2013) expressly states that "no conviction shall be handed down based solely on the statements of a cooperating agent," there have been numerous cases in which this has occurred.

In clear defiance of the law and the Constitution of the Republic, not only were convictions handed down based solely on the suspicious word of informants, but also, based only on those words, prosecutors and judges involved in the Lava Jato operation felt no qualms about requesting and ordering coercive detentions, temporary arrests, and preventive arrests.

All these serious illegalities and violations of the Constitution only became possible because of a complete shielding of the media and part of the Supreme Court and the political system.

The authoritarianism and crimes committed by Judge Sergio Moro and the Lava Jato prosecutors were tolerated and are still praised today; one only needs to read Minister Barroso's latest interview to prove it.

However, the Supreme Court's decision to acquit Senator Gleise Hoffmann last night and to prohibit coercive detentions without prior notification could become a significant turning point in re-establishing the validity of the Constitution and the Code of Criminal Procedure as guiding principles for state action in the criminal justice system, serving as instruments to protect citizens against arbitrariness and violence perpetrated by state agents.

Unfortunately, many illegal preventive detentions, coercive detentions (more than 200 in the Lava Jato operation alone), and unjust convictions had to be carried out before the Supreme Court could finally fulfill its role as guardian of the Constitution of the Republic.

The former rector of the University of Santa Catarina, Luiz Carlos Cancelier, was a victim of this police state led by executioners like Moro and Barroso. Similarly, Dona Marisa Letícia was a victim of this system and suffered, I have no doubt, largely as a result of the disastrous and illegal coercive detention ordered by Moro at her home and the relentless persecution of her family.

The police state defended by these grim characters in the Brazilian justice system is a source of pain, suffering, and an inexhaustible source of injustice. The exercise of punitive power in a democracy has rules, and disrespect for them generates insecurity and legal chaos. This is what figures like Moro and Barroso have been betting on. I said, in another article, that the judge who ordered the sterilization of a poor woman in Mococa used a kind of "Lava Jato" approach to state action: the exercise of punishment without rules and based solely on idiosyncrasies.

Beyond the pain, suffering, illegal imprisonments, and unjust convictions, plea bargains have become a very lucrative market; one only needs to look at the current assets of Alberto Youssef, Sergio Moro's preferred informant.

When it was revealed that lawyer Antônio Figueiredo Basto, known as one of the leading experts in plea bargains, responsible for negotiating with names like Alberto Youssef, Renato Duque, and Ricardo Pessoa, had allegedly charged fifty thousand dollars a month to provide security and protection with the Public Prosecutor's Office and the Federal Police, the underbelly of plea bargains became even more exposed to public scrutiny.

I have denounced the fact that the plea bargain system in Brazil has become a lucrative "rewarded relationship," where everything is traded: benefits not permitted by law, protection, and influence peddling. And this doesn't seem to concern judges and prosecutors who claim to want to clean up the country. I have filed numerous complaints involving the obscure underbelly of plea bargains with oversight bodies such as the Attorney General's Office and the National Councils of Justice and the Public Prosecutor's Office, which have done nothing.

It is therefore urgent to establish a Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry in the National Congress to investigate these allegations, regardless of who it may affect.

The fight against corruption cannot serve as a disguise for the practice of crimes or to justify the despotic exercise of judicial power. Public or private agents who engage in influence peddling and enter into illegal plea bargains are not protected by any justification for their actions.