The court grants Cacciola a pardon, and his sentence is extinguished.
The owner of Banco Marka, Cacciola, had been sentenced in 2005 to 13 years in prison for crimes against the financial system.
Fernando Porfírio _247 - Judge Roberta Barrouin Carvalho de Souza, of the Criminal Enforcement Court of Rio de Janeiro, granted pardon this Monday (16) to former banker Salvatore Alberto Cacciola. He was serving a sentence in semi-open regime in 2011.
The owner of Banco Marka, Cacciola, was sentenced in 2005 to 13 years in prison for crimes against the financial system. According to the courts, he allegedly coordinated an irregular bailout operation for the Central Bank that caused a loss of R$ 1,5 billion to public coffers.
Arrested in 2000, Cacciola benefited from a habeas corpus to go to Italy, where he has citizenship, and from where he never returned, even after his arrest was ordered again. In 2008, he traveled to the Principality of Monaco to attend a tennis championship, where he was arrested again and extradited to Brazil.
According to the judge from Rio, the former banker fulfilled all the requirements set forth in Article 1, item III of Decree 7648/2011, issued by the President of the Republic, "it being solely up to the magistrate to analyze whether such requirements are met in the case under analysis."
According to the decision, Cacciola benefited because he is over 60 years old, has served one-third of his sentence, and has not committed any serious offense in the twelve months prior to the granting of the benefit, thus meeting all the requirements outlined in the decree.
Considering that a pardon, according to the provisions of item II of article 107 of the Penal Code, is a cause for the extinction of punishability, the convict's punishability was extinguished as a result of the decision that granted it.
Last August, the former bank owner was released from prison after the courts granted him parole. He was serving his sentence at the Gericinó penitentiary complex in Bangu, in the western part of Rio de Janeiro.
Cacciola received the benefit at the time, by decision of Judge Natascha Maculan Adum Dazzi, who assessed good behavior and completion of one-third of the sentence.
In April 2011, the Supreme Federal Court (STF) had denied, by eight votes to one, the request for Cacciola to be released pending trial; however, the Court granted an order for the judge overseeing the execution of the sentence to assess the possibility of him serving his sentence in a semi-open regime. Due to legal prerogatives, he obtained conditional release.