Appellate judge releases former Education minister
Appellate Judge Ney Bello ordered Thursday the release of the former minister Milton Ribeiro and other four people suspected of taking part in a corruption scheme in the Ministry of Education. The magistrate is one of the names listed to take a position in the Superior Court of Justice (STJ). The nomination is up to President Jair Bolsonaro, to whom Mr. Ribeiro is an ally.For Ney Bello, as Mr. Ribeiro left the ministerial post in March, there would be no reason for him to be arrested preventively almost three months later. He extended the decision to religious leaders Gilmar Santos and Arilton Moura, to Helder Bartolomeu, who is Mr. Moura’s son-in-law, and Luciano Musse, a former advisor at the Ministry of Education.According to the judge, since the search and seizure warrants have already been served and the confidentiality breaches have been granted, "there is not enough reason to maintain the detention, without concrete demonstration of where there would be a risk to the investigations."According to him, as the name itself indicates, "preventive detention serves to prevent, not to punish; it serves to protect and not to repay the evil that may have been done." He states that "precautionary measures are not prior censures or early condemnations; they are not even media events that have the effect of provoking political catharsis or sensations of application of the due right to the common citizen."Federal Judge Renato Borelli in Brasília had decided to take the former minister to jail. On Thursday, the Federal Court informed that the judge was receiving "hundreds of threats" from Mr. Ribeiro’s supporters. The investigation requests have already been sent to the Federal Police.In his order, Judge Borelli justified the measure due to the risk of the suspects trying to interfere in the ongoing investigations, as well as the need to maintain public order and prevent further violations."The existence of the ‘periculum libertatis’ is proven, since the investigated, in a kind of ‘parallel office’, were inserted in the political context of the country by occupying prominent positions in the federal executive branch, which allows them to proceed in a way to interfere in the production, destruction or even concealment of evidence that may be useful to the clarification of the entire criminal plot," wrote the magistrate.According to him, adopting only precautionary measures other than prison would not be effective, "since they would not have the...
Para continuar a ler
PEÇA SUA AVALIAÇÃO