Pastor Moises Martins

Key to Lava Jato, Youssef wins 'freedom' after three years

According to collaborating with the operation, doleiro was sentenced to 132 years in prison, but he takes off his ankle brace today after betraying Lula, Cunha and Renan, among others.

Exactly three years after being imprisoned by the Federal Police in a hotel in São Luís (MA), in the first phase of Lava Jato, doiro Alberto Youssef will progress on Friday to the open regime. After two years and eight months imprisoned in Paraná, between the PF prison in Curitiba and the Criminal Medical Complex of Pinhais, Youssef, one of the main informers of the operation, will return to the capital of Paraná to remove the electronic anklet and, finally, to be able to go And come without restrictions, to work or leisure.

His lawyers do not comment on what activities the doleiro will dedicate from today, when he returns to São Paulo, where he was held in custody four months ago. They simply say that he is trying to start life again from the spotlight of the press. Since November, the informant spends his days in an apartment of about 50 square meters overlooking the Ibirapuera Park in Vila Nova Conceição, a prime neighborhood in the western part of the state capital.

This will be the second "restart" of Youssef. He was arrested and convicted in the Banestado case, which came to light in 1998, for crimes against the tax order, evasion of foreign currency, gang formation and active corruption in the frauds in the former Bank of the State of Paraná (Banestado), which involved about 30 billion dollars.

It was at this time that Youssef knew the rigor of the pen of federal judge Sergio Moro, responsible for the Banestado and Lava Jato processes. "I'm the man to have the courage to suck on an ounce, but the only man I'm afraid of on this earth is Sergio Moro," the doleiro said in an interview with journalist Vladimir Netto, author of Lava Jato (First Person, 2016). ).

With two convictions in Banestado, whose sentences totaled eleven years and four months in prison, the doleiro only survived a long season in jail by signing an award agreement with the Federal Public Ministry, approved by the Federal Supreme Court (STF) in November 2014. The commitment to move away from criminal life did not thrive, however, as shown by the Petrobras scandal investigated in Lava Jato.

Faced with the backsliding of the doleiro, Moro decided to rescind his agreement of collaboration of the Banestado and convict him in the case, in September of 2014, to four years and four months of prison. "[Youssef] had his great chance to leave the world of crime with the award-winning collaboration agreement, but he wasted it, as the facts leading to the rescission of the agreement indicate," said the magistrate.

Despite the judge's tugging, Youssef repeated the same expedient in the Lava Jato to avoid spending the rest of his life behind the bars: telling him what he knows. And he got a second "big break" by signing the second Lava Jato deal - he just was not faster than former Petrobras Supply Director Paulo Roberto Costa, his longtime friend.

In his testimony to the MPF's task force, Youssef reported how - and to whom - he sent Petrobras contract bribe referrals with contractors. The doleiro and his "employees" crossed the country to deliver cash-filled suitcases or make deposits overseas through offshore companies.

Among the politicians cited by Alberto Youssef to the prosecutors are former presidents Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, PT Dilma Rousseff and Fernando Collor de Melo, ex-ministers Antonio Palocci and José Dirceu, The deputy cassado Eduardo Cunha (PMDB-RJ), Senator Renan Calheiros (PMDB-AL) and deputies of PT, PP and PMDB.

The revelations of the doleiro sensitized Moro. When Youssef was convicted for the first time in Lava Jato in April 2015, after nine years and two months in jail, the judge considered that "even if the employee is a professional criminal and even if he has failed to comply with a previous agreement, Alberto Youssef, if the statements he has made sound truthful and find corroboration in independent evidence, it is clear that the probative value of the whole remains. "

This was one of nine convictions that the magistrate signed against the doleiro, a defendant in 14 criminal actions of Lava Jato. The total sentences are endless 132 years and 20 days in prison.

The 5th clause of his award agreement with the MPF provides, however, that the penalties of prosecutions be suspended when they make final judgments that result in 30 years imprisonment. Thanks to this condition, Youssef has already had suspended three sentences. He also ended up acquitted in three other cases and had a criminal action extinguished without merit judgment.

Source: Veja