Brazilian Senator Sergio Moro during a Senate session in Brasilia this Wednesday ADRIANO MACHADO (Portal)
The judge who jailed Lula da Silva and top star of the anti-corruption macro-operation Lava Jato, Sérgio Moro, was on the brink of assassination by the First Command of the Capital (PCC), the most powerful drug trafficking faction in the country of South America. This shows a police investigation that came to light this Wednesday and that nine people have been arrested at the moment, most of them in the state of São Paulo.
The drug traffickers’ targets also included District Attorney Lincoln Gakiya, who has been investigating the gang since the early 2000s and has lived with a 24-hour police escort for more than a decade due to the constant death threats he receives. Also in the crosshairs were heads of the prison system in several states.
A destroyed house in São Paulo with a PCC inscription on one of its walls Nelson Antoine (AP)
According to the investigation, the drug traffickers planned homicides and extortion kidnappings that could take place simultaneously in five Brazilian states. They tried to attract national attention. It would be a way to negotiate the release of Marcola, the supreme leader of the PCC, who still rules in the shadows from prison. In 2019, when Moro was Minister of Public Security under Jair Bolsonaro, the federal and state governments of São Paulo reached an agreement to transfer Marcola and 21 other PCC members to maximum security prisons. The transfer request came from Gakiya, whose team discovered a faction plan to rescue several leaders detained in a prison in Presidente Venceslau, in central São Paulo.
Drug dealers kept a constant eye on Moro and his family in Curitiba, the city where he lived until a few months ago when he moved to Brasilia to make his debut as a senator. At least ten people took turns following his steps and memorizing his routine. They rented houses and even an office next to the addresses he used to frequent. According to the police leadership, other authorities were also monitored by the PCC practically in real time.
At a press conference, Justice and Public Security Minister Flávio Dino said he had mobilized the Director of the Federal Police after Senate President Rodrigo Pacheco alerted him to signs of attacks on authorities, including Senator Moro. The Special Action Group to Combat Organized Crime (Gaeco) led by Gakiya in São Paulo had already alerted the police and Moro himself and his wife Rosângela Moro (elected federal deputy) in January. Since then, the two have seen their personal security strengthened.
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File image of PCC guns seized by São Paulo police in 2006. JONNE RORIZ (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Moro thanked police for their work on Twitter, but left his version of events to a Senate podium statement to give it a more solemn tone. The smashing of plans to kill him brought him back to the front pages after a period of weak hours. Although he managed to be elected senator, the popularity he gained years ago before Operation Lava Jato, which led to his signing as Bolsonaro’s minister and an abrupt presidential bid that did not thrive due to a lack of political support, lags far behind. His newly opened career as a senator is not easy either. Bolsonaro’s party appealed to the courts to have his mandate annulled to benefit his losing candidate, and in his own party, the União Brasil, they are making a vacuum of him.
The “timing” of the police operation also plays a role for Moro, as Lula had said in an interview a few hours earlier that during his time in prison, when asked by visitors if he was fine, he would answer that he was only then would be fine if he was okay “crappy”. to more. The judge at the time sentenced him to nine years and six months in prison for passive corruption and money laundering and became his number one public enemy and the black beast of the left. After the police operation, social media was awash with comments linking Lula’s thirst for revenge to the PCC’s plans. The Attorney General deeply regretted this: “I am shocked at the level of shamelessness of those trying to politicize a serious investigation, so serious that it was conducted in defense of the life and integrity of a senator against our government,” he said.
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