The Council of Justice dismissed the judge who sentenced Lula to prison based on a copy of Sergio Moro’s sentence

The National Council of Justice (CNJ), which oversees all justice in Brazil, suspended judge Caroline Hardt, who rose to fame in 2018 when she sentenced incumbent President Lula da Silva to 12 years in prison for corruption, copying the sentence. a year earlier, the former judge of Operation Lava Hato, Sergio Moro, whom he replaced.

The decision was made by CNJ Magistrate Luiz Felipe Salomao, who is responsible for investigating and punishing misconduct and crimes committed by judges at any level of Brazilian justice.

According to the Salomao decision, Caroline Hardt repeatedly violated the procedural order in her actions, repeatedly violated the judicial code, committed several malfeasance and even showed contempt for the decisions of the Federal Supreme Court (STF) itself.

In the decision, Luis Felipe Salomao writes that Judge Carolina Hardt and other participants in the Lava Jato operation, namely the prosecutors of the Federal Ministry of State (MPF) and the second instance judges associated with the group, behaved as if they were an untouchable parallel force that presumably echoes all the others.

The magistrate, now suspended from any role in the administration of justice, replaced Judge Sergio Moro in 2018 at the head of Operation Lava Hato, commanded by the 13th Federal Court of Curitiba, capital of the state of Paraná, when the then judge left his legal position. career to become Minister of Justice and Public Security under newly elected President Jair Bolsonaro.

The judge idolized Moro so much that she repeatedly quoted her former boss in her sentences and, in the case of Lula da Silva, simply copied the verdict in which Sergio Moro sentenced the former president to 12 years in prison in 2017 to convict him. . to a new sentence of 12 years in 2018, with virtually no change to the comma in the new sentence, both of which have already been overturned by the STF.

However, in accordance with the decision to exclude her from any position in any area of ​​the judiciary, Caroline Hardt is accused of agreeing with Deltan Dallagnol, head of the prosecutor’s office of the Federal Ministry of State, of the actions and decisions that they will take together to condemn. Lula and others were accused at the time, which violates the norm of separation of powers and limits the possibilities of the defense.

It was the magistrate who created the legal basis for the creation of a supposed fund without clear objectives, which would be supplied with at least 500 million euros of funds transferred from Petrobrás and returned during the Lava Jato operation, and which, strangely enough, would be managed by the same Dallagnol, also already expelled from the MPF by Caroline and the group they were part of.

In addition to Caroline Hardt, the magistrate also ordered the removal from the bench of Judges Thompson Flores and Lorasi Flores de Lima of the Federal Regional Court of the 4th Region (TRF-4), the second instance of justice hearing appeals from those convicted in the Lava Hato case, as well as Judge Danilo Pereira Junior, current head of the 13th Court of Curitiba.

Salomao also accuses everyone of not respecting the basic rules that judges must respect, of rejecting the appeals of the accused, such as the repeated appeal of Lula da Silva, without any technical analysis and of acting based on ideological beliefs and self-interest, rather than in accordance with as the law stipulates, and they have also disobeyed the orders of the Federal Supreme Court on several occasions, even ordering the arrest of accused persons already acquitted by the STF.