Brazil's association of Federal Police delegates says Director General Andrei Rodrigues has no authority to order investigators to rewrite their reports, after the two detectives who tied Supreme Court justices to the Banco Master banker were removed from their posts.
BRASILIA — The national association of Brazil’s Federal Police delegates said this week that the force’s director general, Andrei Rodrigues, has no authority to order investigators to rewrite their own reports, a rare public rebuke from inside the police over the removal of the two detectives who ran the Banco Master investigation. “It is not the role of the Federal Police director general to interfere in the content or to order the reformulation of documents,” the association, known as ADPF, said in a statement on Nov. 10. It called the situation “grave” and warned that it sets a “concerning precedent.”
The detectives are Daniel Mostardeiro Cola and Wedson Cajé Lopes, who led the Federal Police’s unit on corruption and financial crimes. On Nov. 3 they filed three intelligence reports, requested by Chief Justice Edson Fachin, that mention Justices Alexandre de Moraes, Dias Toffoli and Kassio Nunes Marques in connection with Daniel Vorcaro, the jailed owner of the collapsed Banco Master. The first of those reports became public days ago. The next day, the head of the force’s anti-corruption directorate signed an order to redo them, and on Nov. 5 the two detectives were told they were out, as this newspaper reported. All the justices named deny any wrongdoing.
What the police themselves are saying
The ADPF argued that investigations must remain the responsibility of the delegates who coordinate them, with the participation of police teams, the Public Ministry and the courts, and not of the director general’s office. The association, which according to press reports represents more than 2,300 Federal Police delegates, went further and called for institutional change. “The succession of crises, regardless of the government in office, shows that the problem is also structural,” it said.
There is also a detail that did not come from the association’s statement but from its president. Rodrigues ended his own 24-year membership in the ADPF on Nov. 5, the same day the two detectives were told they were out, without giving a written or verbal explanation, according to the association’s president, Edvandir Felix de Paiva, who said no complaint had been raised beforehand. Nothing in the record says the two events are connected. The calendar says they happened on the same day.
Why it matters
Imagine the director of the FBI removing the two agents who had just sent the chief justice of the United States a set of reports on his colleagues’ ties to a banker under arrest, ordering the reports rewritten without “value judgments,” and then walking out of the agents’ own professional association on the same day. The Lula regime’s Federal Police, which answers to the Justice Ministry and is led by Rodrigues, an appointee of the president, did precisely that sequence, and the official explanation is an administrative restructuring that began in October. For American readers, the stakes are those of any country where the body that investigates powerful people is run by people who answer to the powerful: the case that is supposed to test the Brazilian Supreme Court is now being handled by a police leadership that has just shown how it handles inconvenient paperwork.
The record
Confirmed: the ADPF statement of Nov. 10 and its wording, the names of the two removed detectives, the Nov. 3 filing, the order to redo the reports, the removals, Rodrigues leaving the association on Nov. 5 and the official explanation of a restructuring. Reported: the internal “breach of trust” reason given in the force, and the content of the reports, which remain under seal. Alleged: that the director general interfered in the content of the reports, which is the association’s position, not a finding by any court or oversight body. Denied: any wrongdoing by the justices named.
The pattern is now hard to miss. When an investigation reaches the top of the Supreme Court, the investigators are moved, the documents are softened, and the loudest objection comes from the profession that was told to stay quiet. The next test is whether the rewritten reports say what the originals said, and whether anyone with the power to demand the originals, in the Senate or in the courts, will ask for them.
The Watch Post Daily will continue to follow this story. Sources: statement of the National Association of Federal Police Delegates (ADPF), Folha de S.Paulo, Gazeta do Povo, Agenda do Poder, Brasil de Fato.
Featured image: Sede da Polícia Federal by Agência Senado, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.
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