Ricardo Balthazar & Felipe
Bächtold, Folha and Paula Bianchi & Leandro Demori,
The Intercept Brasil.
August 19, 2019
Operation Car Wash prosecutors
circumvented legal limits to obtain sensitive tax personal data, according to
messages obtained by The Intercept Brasil and analyzed by Folha and the site.
The messages show that members
of the Curitiba task force in Curitiba sought information from Brazil's revenue
service about people it wanted to investigate without a formal request and
court authorization.
To obtain the data,
prosecutors counted on the cooperation of tax auditor Roberto Leonel, who
headed COAF's intelligence area in Curitiba until 2018 and assumed the
presidency of the Financial Activities Control Board (COAF) in the Jair
Bolsonaro (PSL) government.
The messages also show that
the task force established such a close working relationship with Leonel that
they relied on him to verify investigators' hypotheses, without any objective
elements to justify access to data from the tax authorities.
At the beginning of 2016,
prosecutors used this file frequently during investigations into reforms
carried out by contractors at the Atibaia (SP) site frequented by former
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (PT).
From January to March of this
year, the task force asked Leonel to gather information about Lula's
daughter-in-law, the housekeeper, the heritage of her former owners, and
purchases that the wife of the PT leader, Marisa Leticia Lula da Silva, would
have made at that time.
The Lava Jato task force in
Curitiba and the Revenue service stated that the exchange of information
between them during investigations is permitted by law and occurs within limits
that respect the taxpayers' guaranteed confidentiality.
Leonel and COAF did not
respond to the report's questions.
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