Brazil's Federal Police say lobbyist Roberta Luchsinger, investigated over suspected influence peddling in business with the federal government, made "significant cash transactions" and used part of that money to pay for airline tickets for Fábio Luís Lula da Silva, known as Lulinha, the eldest son of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The claims appear in the document that grounded the opening of a police inquiry into Lulinha, reported on Monday (24) by the newspapers Folha de S.Paulo and O Estado de S. Paulo. The case runs at the Supreme Court (STF) under seal, with Justice André Mendonça as rapporteur.
According to Folha, which had access to the document, the police highlight that on June 25, 2025, Roberta's driver made "two cash collections with an unknown third party", worth R$ 100,000 and R$ 200,000. Of that total, R$ 50,000 was passed to a travel agency that had issued tickets for Lulinha and the lobbyist. On the same day, the agency was used to pay for R$ 2,000 tickets for both, from Brasília to Congonhas airport in São Paulo.
Two months later, on August 25, 2025, Roberta told businessman Cléber Ribas, in a conversation transcribed by investigators and obtained by O Estado de S. Paulo, that she had warned Lulinha the tickets would be cut off because of a businessman's late payments:
"Hey, Fábio, it is over now, because the house costs us about R$ 100,000 a month, so the tickets just will not be possible anymore"
By the lobbyist's account, Lulinha replied that he would start asking the businessmen for the payments directly. For the Federal Police, "it can be inferred that paying for Fábio's airline tickets was a recurring practice, and that this provision was expected to end because of a new expense related to a property". The force said, however, that the investigation must be deepened to clarify precisely what Roberta meant.
The Brasília house and the Supreme Court case
Roberta did not make clear which property she was referring to. A labor lawsuit filed by a former employee indicates the lobbyist kept a house in Brasília frequently used by Lulinha and used for social events with politicians, according to O Estado de S. Paulo. Police also suspect that Ribas acted as an intermediary for payments from a man identified only as Freitas, who has not been located. When the conversation took place, investigations into the diversion of pension payments at the INSS, Brazil's social security institute, were already under way, which investigators believe may explain the difficulty in payments to the lobbyist.
In an interview aired on Monday, Lula said that "no one is above the law" when commenting on the accusations against his son, according to O Estado de S. Paulo. On Friday (21), Roberta's defense asked Mendonça to halt the investigation, according to O Globo.
What the defenses say
Lulinha's defense told O Estado de S. Paulo that the house was never his and that he only stayed at the residence occasionally. Speaking to Folha, his lawyer Marco Aurélio de Carvalho said that "sectors of the Federal Police instrumentalized by political and electoral interests keep trying to interfere in the 2026 elections" and that the case files do not prove the money was used to pay for the tickets. "It is a veritable jigsaw puzzle of inferences born of the irresponsibility of those who have no real project or program for the country", he said, comparing the case to "the worst that happened during the defunct Operation Car Wash", the corruption probe known in Brazil as Lava Jato.
Roberta's defense said it would not comment on "conversations supposedly taken from a report that is under seal". Ribas's defense said in a statement that "it is not possible to comment on alleged messages without prior access to the raw data of the electronic interception or to the full set of ongoing investigations".