SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Brazil’s Supreme Court voted on Wednesday to move part of the country’s largest-ever corruption probe to another judge, challenging the notion that all pieces of a case that initially focused on state-run oil firm Petrobras are legally linked.
Justice Dias Toffoli argued that an investigation into whether President Dilma Rousseff’s former chief of staff Gleisi Hoffmann received bribes related to a federal planning ministry contract with a software firm was unrelated to Petrobras and could be heard by a different judge.
The majority of judges at Brazil’s highest court agreed, the Supreme Court said in a statement. Hoffmann has not been charged and said she did not benefit from the software company.
In spinning off the Hoffmann case, the Supreme Court ruled that non-elected suspects in the alleged planning ministry fraud should be judged by a court in Sao Paulo state and not by federal judge Sergio Moro in the southern city of Curitiba.
Defence lawyers unsuccessfully tried for over a year to take the case away from Moro but were previously unable to knock down his argument that all facts originating from an investigation of bribery at Petrobras in Parana state are linked.
Now, more defence lawyers may try to argue their clients should be heard by judges in other states as the investigation expands.
Under Brazilian law, lawmakers and some other politicians can only be tried by the Supreme Court. Moro was not overseeing the investigation of the more than two dozen elected officials suspected of taking money stolen from Petrobras.
