This Friday, we submitted to the 13th Federal Court of Curitiba, as attorneys to former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, concrete probable cause regarding the occurrence of illegal acts in virtue of the video recordings of his compulsory interrogation on 03/04/2016 and, also, the disclosure of these recordings to third parties, unrelated to the investigations. The federal police chief, Igor Romário de Paula, admitted today (03/27) that Lula’s compulsory interrogation was recorded indeed, though he still denies the images were ceded to third-parties.

The existence of the recordings, which was admitted by the Federal Police, is enough to prove that the Court’s decision was disregarded, on account of the order for not recording the interrogation “in any event”.

Our petition also demonstrates that there was an open confession (even if involuntarily) on the part of people unrelated to the investigations and who had access to the recordings made by the Federal Police. It is worth mentioning that the journalist Ulisses Campbell published: “The Veja magazine had complete access to the recording made by a digital camera embedded to the uniform of an agent of the Federal Police who participated in the action” (edition of 2/8/2017). Likewise, Gustavo Foster (from the Zero Hora news program), Marcelo Antunez (director of “A lei é para todos”, the Brazilian movie about Operation Car Wash, freely translated into English as “The law is for everyone”), Tomislav Blazic (producer of the movie), Ary Fontoura (actor cast for the movie) made similar statements to several publications.

When asked by the Veja magazine what he was doing at the Federal Police of Curitiba, the Brazilian actor Ary Fontoura said: I came to feel the environment of Operation Car Wash and watch the recordings made by the Federal Police during Lula’s compulsory interrogation”.

This petition reiterates previous requests to cease any disclosure of the recorded images, and thus keep the material’s confidentiality. It also restates the necessary investigation on any crimes of violation of the public employees’ duty to maintain secrecy over the material and any participation of the people connected with the movie, whose investigators are kept in secret.

Cristiano Zanin Martins and Valeska Teixeira Zanin Martins