STJ orders resumption of TCU process against Deltan for daily Lava Jato

The Superior Court of Justice (STJ) determined this Saturday (25) the resumption of the investigation by the Federal Court of Auditors (TCU) on daily rates, tickets and gratuities to former attorney Deltan Dallagnol (Podemos) and other members of the task force of Lava Jato in Curitiba.

The president of the STJ, Minister Humberto Martins, responded to a request from the Attorney General’s Office (AGU), which appealed the decision that had suspended the investigation by the Court of Auditors.

In the decision, which CNN had access, Martins claims that the TCU’s inspection activity is “healthy and legitimate”, “for the purpose of verifying possible financial damages to the public treasury in the management of the service and daily trips of the Attorneys of the Republic, stationed in other units, for the purpose of exercise of its institutional activity in Curitiba for specific activities in Operação Lava Jato”.

According to the president of the STJ, the suspension of the TCU investigation could have “a multiplier effect that impedes the regular and legitimate inspection activity of the Court of Auditors” and, according to the minister, “in the end, there may be a decision for the regularity of the application of public values, there being, therefore, no harm to the investigated parties, which legitimizes the stimulus to the due investigation in favor of the whole society, the final recipient of the public services performed”.

wanted by CNN the former prosecutor has not yet manifested.

In the appeal of the AGU, the constitutional representative of the TCU, the institution says that there are no irregularities in the procedure opened by the court and argues that the suspension of the investigation prevents, in practice, “the full exercise of the Powers constitutionally guaranteed” to the Court of Auditors.

“It is not too much to remember that the function of judging the accounts of those responsible for public money is attributed by the Constitution exclusively to the TCU”, writes the AGU.

According to the AGU, the investigative procedure is in a preliminary stage and that, so far, there has been no manifestation of the TCU regarding the merits of the case, which has as its scope suspected irregularities and damage to public coffers with the payment of R $2.557 million in per diems and tickets to five Lava Jato prosecutors from 2014 to 2021.

According to the AGU, the decision in favor of the former Lava Jato attorney could not only “paralyze the activities of external control that are responsible for the recovery of large amounts from the public coffers”, but also create a precedent that, in practice, could make with that the TCU starts to receive, “at all times”, “judicial determinations in the sense of impeding the processing and judgment of external control procedures”.

In the appeal, the AGU also claims that Dallagnol’s request was intended to “disrupt” the progress of the process, since the allegations he presented to the Federal Court have not yet been analyzed by the TCU.

“The mere participation in the process of external control causes no real or potential harm to the author, much less to any other citizen who is in a similar situation, since they will have the opportunity to fully exercise their right of defense and even claim nullities or any other another matter”, says the AGU.

For the AGU, “there is no need to talk about injury or threat of injury to individual rights only by calling the person responsible to the case to present a defense in the face of alleged irregularity causing damage to the treasury”.

Decision

At the beginning of the month, the Federal Court of Paraná suspended the case against Dallagnol in the TCU, on the grounds that “there are reasonable indications that special accounting is illegal”.

Federal judge Augusto César Pansini Gonçalves, of the 6th Federal Court of Curitiba, stated that the then Lava Jato attorney did not act as an expense officer or devised a model for paying the daily allowances and tickets for the task force members.

In the magistrate’s assessment, the rapporteur of the accounting at the TCU, Minister Bruno Dantas, disregarded the finding of court technicians regarding the need for new steps, “as it was ruthlessly failed to carry out the hearings of several agents absolutely fundamental for the proper assessment of alleged irregularities.

Also according to Gonçalves, the court’s urgency in judging the accounting will make it impossible to recognize “vices and improprieties” in the citation of the former prosecutor, as well as causing serious damage to Dallagnol’s reputation.