Moro wants to choose the court to judge him.

By waiving his privileged jurisdiction in the Supreme Federal Court (STF) in the case of the complaint filed by lawyer Tacla Duran, who alleged before Judge Eduardo Appio of the 13th Federal Court of Curitiba that he suffered extortion in 2017 as part of Operation Lava Jato, current senator and former judge Sérgio Moro (UB-PR) may simply be trying to choose the court in which this accusation will be judged.

Last Monday (March 27), in a hearing before Appio, Duran confirmed the accusation he has been making since 2017 about the attempted extortion he suffered at the hands of a friend of then-judge Moro. In exchange for a payment of US$ 5 million, they promised him favors in the criminal case he was facing in Operation Lava Jato, in which he was accused of money laundering for the Odebrecht Construction Company.

According to him, the extortion attempt came from lawyer Carlos Zucolloto Junior, who was a partner of the former judge's wife, Rosângela Moro — now a federal deputy — and godfather at their wedding.

Appio – who currently heads the court that Moro led before becoming Minister of Justice under Jair Bolsonaro – upon learning of the possible involvement of Senator Moro (UB-PR) and former Public Prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol, currently a federal deputy for Podemos-PR, referred the accusations to Justice Ricardo Lewandowski of the Supreme Federal Court. The Justice is already handling cases related to the same matter. According to the new head of the 13th Federal Court of Curitiba, the privileged jurisdiction of federal parliamentarians prevails.

Against the "odious privilege"

In a petition signed by lawyer Luis Felipe Cunha, his first alternate in the Senate, filed on Tuesday night (March 28), Moro rebelled against the privileged jurisdiction of the Supreme Federal Court. In the petition, he alleges that:

"He is a critic of the special jurisdiction for high-ranking officials, deeming it a privilege incompatible with the principle of equality. He does not intend to enjoy this odious privilege under any circumstances, preferring and intending to be prosecuted and judged during his term as Senator like any ordinary citizen before a first-instance judge, provided that judge is impartial."

To support his request, he points out that the accusation refers to the period when he was a judge and Dallagnol was a federal prosecutor, and as such they did not have jurisdiction in the Supreme Federal Court (STF):

"The alleged acts of extortion to which Your Excellency refers in the hearing transcript, although false, are not, according to precedents established by the Supreme Federal Court itself, within the jurisdiction of that Supreme Court."

TRF-4 to judge it

At the same time, the defense of the now-senator questions the fact that the exception of bias presented by the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office against Appio himself has not yet been considered "in all cases of Operation Lava Jato, which includes this process and all its developments."

Moro and the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office actually want to remove Appio – who has never hidden his criticism of the methods adopted by the Lava Jato task force – from the cases still pending in the 13th Federal Court related to the operation.

However, by waiving the special jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, arguing that he was a judge at the time of the events, he ends up defending that Duran's accusations be sent to the Federal Regional Court of the 4th Region, which has the authority to judge cases related to first-instance judges and prosecutors.

The TRF-4 still maintains a good number of judges sympathetic to Lava Jato and, consequently, to the so-called "Republic of Curitiba," formed by the judge, prosecutors, and federal agents linked to Lava Jato.

In other words, for Moro and Dallagnol it is more advantageous for everything to be heard in Porto Alegre. Essentially, by waiving his privileged jurisdiction, the senator is trying to choose the court that will judge him.