Márcia Seabra

🚨🇧🇷 I DUG DEEPER INTO THE BRAZILIAN SUPREME COURT’S RECORDS, AND I DISCOVERED WHO INITIATED THE PETITION THAT HAS LED TO THE RESTRICTIONS ON FLÁVIO BOLSONARO’S PASSPORT! Remember how the Federal Police submitted a request to seize Flávio Bolsonaro’s passports just SEVEN MINUTES after Lula’s election victory was confirmed? Well, I started digging into the STF’s records and found something else. On October 19, SIX DAYS BEFORE THE ELECTION, a petition was filed under case number PET 16952. The applicant listed in the court records is Luiz Lindbergh Farias Filho (@lindberghfarias), a politician from Lula’s socialist party (PT). The respondent is Willer Tomaz de Souza, a lawyer associated with Flávio Bolsonaro. On October 23, two days before the election, the case was assigned to Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, not through a random lottery, but through a procedure called distribuição por prevenção, meaning Moraes was considered responsible because of an earlier related proceeding. And here’s where things get insane. Lindbergh had also reportedly requested investigative measures involving Flávio Bolsonaro and Willer Tomaz. On October 23, Moraes ordered financial restrictions against Tomaz. Then, on October 25, the very night Lula’s election victory was confirmed, the Federal Police requested restrictions on Flávio Bolsonaro’s passports in another proceeding, PET 16877. The Federal Police reportedly used Flávio’s relationship with Willer Tomaz and concerns about Tomaz leaving Brazil as part of its justification. But here’s another detail: according to reporting, the bank Santander had already informed Moraes that Flávio had never been registered as a user of a bank account that had raised investigators’ suspicions. And yet the passport request proceeded that evening. Now try to examine the underlying judicial documents. ACCESS DENIED. PET 16952 is classified under Segredo de Justiça. Even a Brazilian lawyer attempting to access its restricted documents without authorization receives an access-denied message. We can see the filing dates. We can see the parties. We can see that Moraes received the case before the election. But we cannot examine the documents needed to establish precisely how these proceedings were connected, what evidence was submitted, or why particular measures were considered necessary. And that is precisely the problem. The Brazilian Supreme Court is supposed to serve the Brazilian people. Judicial secrecy may be legally justified in some circumstances, but that cannot eliminate the need for accountability. How are Brazilians supposed to scrutinize the actions of their highest court when crucial documents are inaccessible? Who initiated these requests? Which earlier proceeding justified Moraes’s assignment? How exactly did PET 16952 relate to PET 16877? And what evidence ultimately justified the restrictions against Flávio Bolsonaro? These are legitimate questions. THE BRAZILIAN PEOPLE DESERVE ANSWERS, NOT JUST ANOTHER “ACESSO NEGADO.”