 For more videos on People's Juggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Hello and welcome to People's Dispatch. Today we are joined by Daniel Giovanas, who is a reporter with Presidio de Fato. He wrote a dossier on the case of Operation Car Wash, looking at a year of critical coverage and what has happened in this whole events and all of the different corruption cases that were around this. He's here with us today because yesterday on Monday the news broke that Lula with all of his convictions in the court in Paraná and Curitiba would be overturned. So Daniel is here with us today to understand what happened, what led up to this, and what does this mean for Brazil, what were the motivations behind this case, and what can we expect in the future. So thank you so much for joining us, Daniel. Hi Zoe, thank you for inviting me. Hope I can help you understanding all this context in Brazil. Great, well as you know it's a bit of a complicated case, of course you have a lot of experience covering this. So first we wanted to start out, what happened with Lula's case this week? There was a decision made by the Minister Fleshing. What does this mean? Can you give us a little context on this? Yes, in fact it's a very special week for all of us who have been following and covering this long journey of the former President Lula to prove his innocence in this operation. So what happened this week as you asked me? Well first on Monday afternoon Minister Edson Fakim from the Supreme Court, he recognized the incompetence of the 13 Federal Court of Curitiba, Paraná, to judge four cases of corruption and money laundering involving Lula in this operation. So the triplex case and the Atibaya site case in which he was condemned in first and second instances, and he was trying to revert these sentences in superior courts. And two cases more about donations and a land for the Lula Institute. This monocratic decision of Fakim, it says that all these four cases are from now on, based on the argument of incompetence. Lula lawyers have been insisting on this argument since 2016. At least five years ago they started arguing this. What they say and what now the Supreme Court recognizes is that the only reason for these cases to be there in Curitiba in the Federal Court was the involvement of Petrobras, our state oil company, in the four accusations. But this involvement of Petrobras was never shown, never proved. And between the lines what we can say, we can read, is that the judge Sergio Moro, who first condemned Lula in the case of triplex, he was concentrating the cases involving the former president Lula in order to consolidate his position as a leader of the car wash operation in Curitiba. So it's important to remember that Sergio Moro, the same judge, former judge now, he became minister of justice in Bolsonaro government in 2019. And Bolsonaro won the elections mostly because Lula was arrested several months before the elections. So in your resume, the accusations against Lula, they will be analyzed now from the beginning by a new court in Distrito Federal in the capital, Brasilia. And they are unlikely to be judged before the next presidential race. I say that because with Fakim's decision Lula recovered his political rights and now can run for president in the next year. Great. That's very necessary information to understand the kind of a complicated case with different types of corruption. Where does this correspond legally? So as you were saying, Fakim essentially declared that the judiciary of Curitiba was, did not have the legal competence to be able to make this ruling. We've heard in the news for the past couple of months, there's been a lot of leaks that have happened around Sergio Moro. Of course we know the intercept leaks which happened several years ago, which were really watershed moment in the case. What has been happening in the past couple of months? How did he reach this decision? And how can we understand this? Yes. The first thing we need to know is that this decision of Fakim, it was correct. It's very well justified. But it was very late. As I said, the lawyers have been arguing that for at least five years. It was very clear that that court in Curitiba doesn't have the competence to judge all these cases. But all that was ignored by the Supreme Court until last Monday. So the timing of this decision is relevant and has to be criticized because this delay had a huge impact. It interfered directly in the elections of 2018 in which Lula was unable to dispute and Bolsonaro was elected. So it's very important to understand that this timing was a problem. I mean, this delay had such an impact in our political context. And the second thing I think it's also very important is that although Minister Fakim of the Supreme Court, he hasn't mentioned the partiality of the formal judge Sergio Moro and the prosecutors of car wash operation in Curitiba. In the last couple of months, it's one of the main issues in Brazil political scenario. Since last year, a huge number of dialogues between the prosecutors and Moro on Telegram have been released. And they show how they were interested in punishing Lula and all these dialogues expose many violations to our constitution. So all these messages and the narrative of partiality in the car wash operation, which have been getting more and more consolidated since last year. All these contexts certainly have influenced Fakim's decision, although he doesn't mention this in his decision. I don't know if it's clear, but as Fakim is very close to Sergio Moro and to car wash operation, we can consider that the decision he made on Monday was also an alternative, not only to make justice for Lula, but to avoid the judgment of Moro's suspicion in the Supreme Court. If that was his strategy, I think it went wrong. It wasn't successful because in the next day, Tuesday, thanks to the effort of another minister, Gilmar Mendes, the Supreme Court kept judging Moro and his suspect conduct in the car wash operation. And I think, and it's likely, that Moro will lose again in this case. Yeah, well, I know that you've been covering this case for a while since early on. And right now, in international opinion, this corruption case against Lula is frowned upon because of all the irregularities, because of what we now know. At one point, though, Sergio Moro, that Daniel, who's from, of course, the prosecution team, were applauded on the world stage for their fight against corruption. Looking back, what, how can we kind of understand the operation car wash case, the political motivations, you talked a little bit about the political impact in the elections in 2018. But we know this has had, you know, such a huge impact on Brazil. So can you talk about this? Yes, the car wash operation began in 2014. And to understand all the impacts you were mentioning, I think that we can, we need to understand what was the context there in 2014. And at that time, Brazil was governed by PT, the Workers' Party, for 12 years with important efforts and results to reduce poverty, to promote social inclusion, to strengthen the importance of national companies. And Lula was the great symbol of all this process. He left the government in 2009 with 87% of approval. So he was, and he's until now very popular, especially among the working class. And then with the operation car wash, the image of the Workers' Party, the PT, started to be affected. All the time in the whole hegemonic media, we have been seen stamp many scandals of corruption, money laundering, and always associating with the image of Lula, even when he didn't, he didn't have any relation with that cases. And in Curitiba specifically, the Prosecutor de la Inho in 2016, he called a press conference and showed in a PowerPoint that Lula was the center or the link of all the corruption in the government, in the state companies, and specifically in Petrobras. I mentioned this event in 2016 because it's very symbolic about how they operate. So Lula wasn't accused of anything until that time. He wasn't judged. But in the media, it was there stamped Lula involved in all this case of corruption. He has, he was the link of all that. So about the motivation of Mouru and Dalaino, maybe the first one was their vanity. I don't know, they were their own pride and arresting the most popular politician at that time or in Brazil's history, maybe was certainly a good way to start this operation that all the time they were saying it would be very huge. It will end the corruption in Brazil. This narrative was there. And the mainstream media was all the time making echo to all this. So in a couple of months, Mouru, the judge who accepted the accusation against Lula, he was treated as a hero in Brazil, the man of the year, the most influence, etc. So outside the Brazil also, they were applauded. And one of the hypothesis is that there were many interests of rich countries, rich companies, multinationals in our petroleum. At that time, 2014, 15, Petrobras had just made some important research to explore the oil in the pre-salt layer. So there was a huge harassment by multinational companies. It was a process that we all followed and we were all very worried about that. So tarnishing the company's image, the Petrobras images and overthrowing a government that wanted to keep the company under state control was kind of a shortcut to provide to dismantling and privatization of the company, the Petrobras. And this process happened or is happening until now. In the same week of Lavajato, in 2016, there was a state cup against Dilma Rousseff of the PT. And two years after, Lula was arrested for 580 days. It's a long time. It's very difficult to go back and to write this history again. So it's there and no decision made in the judicial power can recover all that we lose, we lost in this period. So about the political impact, we had two years of a transitional government led by Michel Temer, who participated directly in the coup process against Dilma. And then not only the image of PT or the left wing parties were affected, but the whole idea of being a politician in Brazil was like contaminated. Being a politician became a synonym of being corrupt. So Car Wash has costed more than four million jobs in Brazil because it has dismantled the whole chain of services related to Petrobras, our shipping industry, our oil industry, the construction sector, the civil engineering and all the economy as a whole. It was never able to recover after the beginning of Car Wash. And now what we are seeing is that Lula reappears in the political scene with real possibilities of being our next president. That's why it's so impactful for us. And this week is being very special in a lot of senses. Yeah, I mean, I can only imagine, especially in the middle of such a difficult time in Brazil, primarily caused by the mismanagement of Jair Bolsonaro. And I think there's a lot of different things to go into. Of course, we haven't even gone into Jair Bolsonaro, but that's another conversation for another day. But as a reporter, as someone who is covering all that was happening with Operation Car Wash, you've also kind of looked at the role of mass media and influencing the case. Lula and his press conference held on Wednesday also mentioned the role that mainstream media, of course, we're talking about global, we're talking about other mainstream media outlets and what they did in influencing the case. This has been also brought up by social movements who have done a lot of mobilizations outside their offices. And just to kind of end up the conversation, what can we say about kind of the role of these hegemonic media in playing a role in this lawfare case against Lula? It was determinant. So being there in Curitiba for more than a year was very important also to understand these movements and the narrative they were creating. It was a fiction they were creating day to day in the newspapers. So I think this question is very relevant because we cannot talk about Car Wash without talking about all the role of the mainstream media in Brazil. As I said, the denounce against Lula wasn't even accepted and Morrow's name was already shown in the newspapers, in the televisions, as the leader of a huge, I mean Lula's name was showed as the leader of a huge corruption scheme in Brazil. So what we have to admit, I think, is that Morrow maintained in a very skillful way a cooperative relationship with the most important and influential means of communication in Brazil. What he wanted at that time was visibility and legitimacy for his actions in Car Wash. And what our mainstream media wanted back and why they accepted this relation, they wanted exclusive information, selective leaks, and all that released in the best timing you can think. I mean, it was released, the breaking news, the breaking informations released in the exact time to appear, for example, in Jornal Nacional, which is the most watched news shows of He de Globo. So Morrow wanted visibility and all this mainstream media, they wanted this exclusive information. And in this game, we all lose, we all lost. We, I mean our population, Lula, Dilma, and everyone who was accused in this operation. This movement of Morrow, it was intentional, it wasn't for accident, and in the part of the mainstream media, there are no innocence in that, of course. We can say for sure that Morrow planned all this, because in 2004, 16 years ago, you can imagine, the same Sergio Morrow wrote an article about Manipuliti, the huge operation that happened in Italy in the early 90s. And Morrow says already in 2004, that the cooperation between the agents of the judicial power and the mainstream media, in the terms I have described, it was determinant for a success, for the success of a huge operation against political corruption. He was writing about Manipuliti, and in Car Wash, he did the same. He followed that model, we can say. So the the brotherhood he builds with the mainstream media, Global Folha de São Paulo, O Estado de São Paulo, the main newspapers in Brazil, this relationship, this brotherhood was so strong that before Fakim's decision last Monday, Hedy Global, for example, barely mentioned these dialogues between Morrow and the agents of Car Wash, which evidence the partiality of the operation, the partiality of all these agents. So before Fakim's decision, Hedy Global didn't talk about this, about this, they didn't recognize how important, how relevant were all these dialogues. So now with this decision of Fakim, Hedy Global and all these mainstream media, they can't avoid, they can't avoid talking about these dialogues and all these denouncing of partiality. The sentences against Lula, the Arnold, as I said, and the Supreme Court soon will consider Morrow's suspect conduct in the Car Wash operation. This I think will be the conclusion, I wait, I wish it will be the conclusion of this huge judicial scandal we are living here in Brazil in the last five, six years. It's been very dramatic with lots of victims, not only Lula, not only the left wing, but all the workers who lost their jobs in this period. Looking at the future, I may sound a little optimist, but after several years covering this issue, I can say that since the beginning of Car Wash operation, we've never been so close to defeat this fraud as we are now. So Lula, not only being free, but this process, all these cases being annulled, I think is a good way to start forming a strong opposition to face Bolsonaro in the presidential race in 2022 next year. So we hope it can help us to find immunity as a left wing to face Bolsonaro and all this terrible government he's leading now. So the impact in terms of politics is huge and we are optimists in this moment after this fucking decision. Yeah, I think that's exactly right and we'll definitely be closely following the developments, closely following what happens with Lula with the case and of course the elections next year, which will be incredibly important for Brazil, for the region, for the world and hopefully will be the end of a long nightmare that has begun, of course, years ago with the coup and this case and hopefully democracy will be once again restored. So thank you so much for joining us, Daniel, and we will be following the reports on Brasil de Fato to be tuned in to all of the latest happenings. Thank you Zoe, it was a pleasure. The judicial terms are a little complicated, a little hard, hope you have understood, but it was a good opportunity to talk about this so important issue in Brazil. So thank you so much. Thank you.