Tacla Durán denounces Moro's friend for coercion and says he will only come to Brazil when he feels safe.

By Joaquim de Carvalho, 247 Rodrigo Tacla Durán canceled his trip to Brazil scheduled for this week, but he has not given up on making accusations against Sergio Moro, Deltan Dallagnol, Carlos Zucolotto Júnior, and Marlus Arns for attempted extortion.

"When are you coming to Brazil?" I asked.

"When those guarantees and security measures are properly implemented," he replied.

What guarantees are these? In response, Tacla Durán submitted a petition that he filed this Thursday in the 13th Federal Court in Curitiba.

He is requesting protection from people who are allegedly coercing him and mentions two names. One of them is Vinícius Veiga Borin, a whistleblower in the Lava Jato corruption scandal. The other is Carlos Zucolotto Júnior, who was a partner of Rosângela Moro.

He requests a "high degree of confidentiality" in the proceedings and invokes his status as a protected witness, under the terms of "paragraph 5 of article 2 of Law 9.807/1999". 

Lawyers for whistleblower Vinícius Veiga Borin have requested to be admitted to the proceedings. 

In a plea bargain in 2016, Borin said that Tacla Durán operated offshore companies with an account at Meinl Bank Antigua, a financial institution controlled by Odebrecht, to make payments abroad.

Tacla Durán says that American authorities had already warned Lava Jato about Borin's "hostile conduct" towards him. Tacla Durán does not detail the episode. In the petition, he states that the facts are narrated in Complaint 43.007.

"Thus, the attempt to qualify for the present case constitutes repeated intimidating conduct by the informant VINICIUS VEIGA BORIN against the protected witness, which is why the aforementioned confidentiality order must be imposed, without prejudice to other measures being taken by this court," he writes, who is acting as his own lawyer.

Regarding Zucolotto, it states that he also "displays intimidating conduct towards the protected witness, including requesting authorization to personally participate in a hearing scheduled by this court, reinforcing the coercion against the protected witness."

Tacla Durán says that "the protected witness (in this case, himself) is already morally coerced and intimidated" by Zucolotto, "and there is even a risk of being physically intimidated in court." 

Finally, he requests that the hearing be rescheduled for another date, confidentially, so that Zucolotto does not participate. And he wants the judge to take action against those responsible for the coercion.

I asked Tacla Durán what these measures would be. "He (Zucolotto) asks to participate in the hearing (in which he is not a party) to coerce, intimidate and interfere in the investigations. Coercing a witness warrants preventive detention," he replied, citing article 312 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.

Judge Eduardo Appio reportedly rescheduled the hearing for April 18, and Tacla Durán intends to be present, but on one condition: "It will be when there is a guarantee of effective protection, without these friendly, suspicious, and disqualified judges who insist on interfering and disregarding the Supreme Court's decision."

As revealed by O Globo, Judge Marcelo Malucelli, who reinstated an arrest warrant issued by Sergio Moro, is the father of João Eduardo Malucelli, who is a partner in the law firm of Rosângela and Sérgio Moro.

Tacla Durán could not be arrested in Brazil, according to a decision by Supreme Court Justice Ricardo Lewandowski, who retired this week. Even so, Malucelli, at the request of the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office, reopened an old case against Tacla Durán and reinstated the arrest warrant.