Brazilian Supreme Court: plea bargain 'is invalid' in PSDB train case.
Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Luiz Fux dismissed accusations in the "plea bargain" of former Siemens transportation division director Everton Rheinheimer, who stated that public officials received bribes from multinational corporations; a report indicates that, "despite the citation, there was no direct mention of PSDB and DEM parliamentarians"; read more in Luiz Orlando Carneiro's analysis, published by Tijolaço.
Blog brick - From the Jota website, which specializes in covering the Judiciary, this afternoon, in a report by Luiz Orlando Carneiro:
With the deciding vote of Justice Luiz Fux, the First Panel of the Supreme Federal Court dismissed, this Tuesday (February 10), the inquiry (INQ 3.815) relating to the alleged cartel formation scheme in bids for the São Paulo metro system, between 1998 and 2008 (Alstom-Siemens Case).
The investigation was "moved up" to the Supreme Court because it included, among those indicted, former federal deputy and current alternate senator José Aníbal (PSDB-SP) and deputy Rodrigo Garcia (DEM-SP), who was in office at the time.
On November 25th, Minister Fux requested to review the case files, resulting in a two-to-two tie (the Supreme Court's panels have five members) in the judgment of the procedural question raised by the case's rapporteur, Minister Marco Aurélio, regarding the continuation of the investigations involving the two politicians.
Ministers Luís Roberto Barroso and Rosa Weber had voted to continue the investigation, believing that further inquiries were warranted, since – although weak – there was evidence linking the parliamentarians to the "narrated facts." Furthermore, they considered there to be "public interest" in continuing the investigation.
The basis of the accusations was the "plea bargain" of the former director of Siemens' transportation division, Everton Rheinheimer. In his testimony to the Federal Police, Rheinheimer stated that parliamentarians received bribes from multinational companies, including the two with parliamentary immunity.
Since Rheinheimer had no foreign bank account, was not convicted by the courts, and did not accuse anyone from the PT (Workers' Party), what he says is not as credible as, of course, what the "professional criminal" (in the words of his "personal" judge, Sérgio Moro) Alberto Youssef says.
Fux's report states that, despite the citation made by the former director of the German multinational, there was no direct mention of the PSDB and DEM parliamentarians. Therefore, he "took the blame" and broke the tie in the vote, dismissing the case.