RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazil’s far-right President-elect Jair Bolsonaro on Thursday named the judge who has upended Brazilian politics with a massive corruption investigation, Sergio Moro, to be his justice minister.
Bolsonaro publicly offered Moro the post after being swept to the presidency Sunday on a wave of anti-establishment anger fueled partly by the judge’s probe into the large-scale looting of state oil company Petrobras.
Moro, 46, flew to Rio de Janeiro on Thursday for a meeting with the hardline conservative. It ended with him accepting the offer to head a “super ministry” combining the justice and public security portfolios, both men said.
The move will likely fuel accusations that Moro’s so-called “Car Wash” probe has been politically motivated and disproportionately targeted left-wing politicians — especially former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, whom polls showed would have beaten Bolsonaro had he not been serving a 12-year corruption sentence.
“Federal judge Sergio Moro has accepted our invitation to be minister of justice and public security. His anti-corruption, anti-organized crime agenda and his respect for the constitution and the law will be our compass!” tweeted Bolsonaro, 63.
Moro confirmed in a statement that he had “accepted the invitation as an honor.”
“This will mean consolidating the advances we have made against crime and corruption in recent years and fending off the risk of a backslide, for the greater good,” he said.
Considered possible presidential material by some, Moro had previously said he had no political ambitions.
But “he always had a political attitude,” said legal expert Daniel Vargas.
That, he said, includes “several cases when he acted to interfere in the dynamics of Brazilian politics,” such as by leaking wire-tapped phone calls of Lula and impeached former President Dilma Rousseff that played a part in the downfall of both.
Moro said he would immediately stop holding court hearings, “to avoid unnecessary conflicts of interest.”
Judicial experts say the Car Wash probe is nearing the end of its work in the southern city of Curitiba, where Moro is based, and increasingly turning its sights on Brasilia, Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.
Since it was launched in 2014, Moro’s investigation has taken out a Who’s Who of politicians and executives who colluded to pump billions of dollars from Petrobras into their own pockets or the coffers of their political parties.
Although politicians of all stripes have fallen, Moro has been accused of being particularly merciless on the left -- especially Lula, Brazil’s president from 2003 to 2010.
Moro sentenced Lula — a hugely divisive but enduringly popular figure — to jail for taking bribes from a Petrobras contractor.
Lula tried to stage a presidential comeback in this year’s elections, but the courts barred his candidacy.
His substitute, former Sao Paulo mayor Fernando Haddad, lost to Bolsonaro in the run-off election, 55 percent to 45 percent.
In a country polarized by the election, Bolsonaro and Moro are divisive figures, too.
The president-elect’s most ardent supporters are elated by his promise to “change Brazil’s destiny” with his hardline conservative agenda and promised crackdown on crime and corruption.
Moro meanwhile is a hero to some for his crusade against endemic graft — but condemned by others as a politically motivated opportunist who pulled the strings of justice to change the fate of Latin America’s largest country.
Dubbed a “Tropical Trump” by some for his vitriolic rhetoric and social media populism, Bolsonaro has wasted no time rolling out his agenda in the four days since the election.
He doubled down on his vow to relax gun-control laws, saying “the country is at war” with criminals.
He named ultra-free-market economist Paulo Guedes as finance minister and former army general Augusto Heleno defense minister.
And he controversially merged the agriculture and environment ministries, drawing warnings from activists that he was selling out Brazil’s natural resources to his backers in the agro business lobby. — AFP
