Lawyer accuses Moro of plagiarism in article and says he will take legal action.
Despite admitting to plagiarism, Bolsonaro's former minister accused his former student, who had published and co-authored the article with him, of plagiarism.
Metropolises - Former Justice Minister Sergio Moro, in co-authorship with a master's student, published a scientific article containing passages identical to those in a text published months earlier by another lawyer on a website specializing in legal news.
The article by Moro and lawyer Beathrys Ricci Emerich, a master's student at Unicuritiba, deals with money laundering from crime through payments to lawyers.
The article from which excerpts were taken without attribution was published on September 1, 2019, on the Consultor Jurídico website and discusses the "debasement of the free exercise of law in times of crisis." Its author is the lawyer Marcelo Augusto Rodrigues de Lemos.
Although the journal where the text bearing Moro's signature was published dates from April/June 2019, records in Beathrys' bibliography reveal that the text was actually published after April 2020. Even the lawyer's social media posts show records from that period.
Contacted by the news outlet, the former judge admitted that there were copied passages without proper citation, but blamed the co-author, who had been advised by him, for the error. The article was removed from the Unicuritiba archives, where it had appeared in the journal Relações Internacionais no Mundo Atual, after questions from Metrópoles.
Contacted by Metrópoles, the author of the text published in Consultor Jurídico, Marcelo Augusto Rodrigues de Lemos, said he was very surprised to find the plagiarized passages and that he is considering possible legal action, since copying intellectual work without citation is a crime.
"I am honored to be cited by a jurist like Moro, but I didn't expect not to be credited for it," he said. "But I would expect at least a retraction from the authors, some acknowledgment," he added.
The news outlet contacted the former minister who, through his press office, said it was "an article published in co-authorship," in which he is supervising a student. "The writing is basically by the student," he said, who also signs the article, as is common when there is collaborative work between students and professors.
Moro then further stated that he consulted with his advisee and admitted the error. "Two short excerpts were copied from the work without proper citation, for which we apologize for the inconvenience. The article has been withdrawn from the journal and will be re-evaluated."
Unicuritiba was also contacted but had not officially commented by the time this report was published, although it had taken down the text accused of plagiarism.
Beathrys Emerich was contacted by reporters, but did not answer the calls. After the inquiry, she closed public access to her social media accounts, where she has photos with Moro and celebrates the publication of the article. The scenes had already been recorded.