Prosecutors in Curitiba deny fraud and illegal wiretapping.

Márcio Chaer, Conjur - Exploiting the hunger for justice and ignorance has always been the great art of demagogues and opportunists. That's what a group of federal prosecutors in Curitiba did. To give an air of grandeur and nobility to a job that should be serious and discreet, they called themselves the "Lava Jato task force." It includes judges, prosecutors, federal police officers, tax auditors, and journalists—but only the prosecutors lend it a face.

Riding the wave of deception, it was invented that processes should not be identified by numbers, but by names. Inquiries, within this charade, were renamed "operations." This set of deceptions was cultivated to involve the general public in a kind of soap opera. The trick of the struggle between good and evil. Pure fantasy.

In an apocryphal press release published on the website of the Public Prosecutor's Office in Paraná, the self-proclaimed "Lava Jato task force," with its characteristic arrogance and presumption, stated that the news published in this online magazine is "fake news."

This English expression gained traction when the Supreme Federal Court opened an inquiry to investigate the origin of the fake news fabricated by the "Lava Jato task force" with the aim of cornering Supreme Court justices. The system was simple, but efficient. Holding a monopoly on major news stories, the newly powerful figures bargained with anyone who wanted to make the headlines of the day. The modest price was to publish false accusations against Supreme Court justices and their families.

This scheme involved not only the dissemination of dishonest assumptions. Public agents working in the Federal Police and the Federal Revenue Service fabricated supposedly compromising "documents" to intimidate ministers who dared to "disobey" the orders of "Operation Lava Jato." As you can see, they know a lot about fake news.

Upon learning that they were being investigated by the Attorney General's Office, the group decided to emerge from their recent self-imposed isolation. By firing shots, naturally. The people who built their reputations on the principle that no one is above the law, that everything should be investigated and made public, suddenly changed their minds.

Habitual slanderers and lynchers accused decent people without evidence. Both in court documents and on Instagram, with the help of collaborators who ultimately elected the new Brazilian political class. Let them face investigations and accusations with the same humility they demanded from the people they accused.

Anyone investigating the actions of this group might be surprised by audacity such as requesting the lifting of confidentiality on high-ranking government officials based on the least known parts of their names, but with the precise CPF (Brazilian taxpayer ID) of the target. Perhaps people named Rodrigo Felinto or Davi Samuel Tobelem.

In a press release issued this Monday (June 29), the person or persons identifying themselves as a "task force" deny having acquired wiretapping and telephone recording equipment (Guardião), as this website published, based on reliable sources. They also deny having fraudulently distributed cases in Curitiba.

The website stands by every word it has published. Investigations by the Attorney General's Office, the Federal Prosecutor's Office's internal affairs division, and ongoing proceedings at the National Council of the Public Prosecutor's Office will clarify the facts. This is despite the resistance from Curitiba, which refused to share with the Attorney General's Office the data that it so kindly shared with the United States government.

Read below the full text of the statement released by "Lava Jato":

"In response to the fake news published on the ConJur website on June 26, 2020, the task force of prosecutors from the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office (MPF) in the Lava Jato case informs that it never acquired the Guardião equipment/system or any other telephone interception equipment. All telephone interceptions carried out in the Lava Jato case were authorized by court order and executed exclusively by the Federal Police."

Several claims made in the published article are also false, such as the one alleging 'fraudulent distribution of cases'. All distributions of Lava Jato cases in Curitiba are submitted to the Judiciary and are electronically registered through the E-proc system of the Federal Court and the Unified System of the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office.

The task force repudiates the dissemination of clearly false information by the aforementioned media outlet.