President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva came out in defense of Federal Police director-general Andrei Rodrigues in an interview with the TV network SBT on Thursday (10). The statement came amid a standoff between the government and Brazil's Supreme Federal Court (STF) over the fate of the police chief, whom Lula himself appointed to the post.
"Andrei is a very competent federal police officer, he has more than 30 years of career, he is the colleague who possibly carried out the biggest search and seizure in the history of organized crime in this country," Lula said, according to news site G1. The president also credited him with the oversight of Banco Master and the arrest of banker Daniel Vorcaro, and added that Andrei bothers people "because the Federal Police has never worked so much".
"I think he bothers a lot of people because the Federal Police has never worked so much, never arrested so much, never recovered so much money and so many drugs as in Andrei's term. That is why I want to say out loud that Andrei has my total confidence, he is a colleague, you know, an expert like few police commissioners in the history of this country."
The crisis at the Supreme Court
Justice André Mendonça ordered Andrei's preventive removal on Tuesday (8). According to the justice, the Federal Police leadership carried out illegal monitoring, known in Brazil as "arapongagem", against Mendonça himself and against the Attorney General of the Union, Jorge Messias, while producing intelligence reports that later supported measures taken by Justice Alexandre de Moraes. The court's Second Panel formed a majority of three votes to uphold the removals, but the ruling was interrupted when Justice Gilmar Mendes asked for more time to review the case.
On Wednesday (9), Justice Flávio Dino reversed the removal in a separate ruling. G1 reported that the request came from the director-general himself; Folha de S.Paulo attributed it to the Attorney General's Office. Hours later, Chief Justice Edson Fachin suspended both decisions and kept Andrei in office.
In the same interview, Lula called for everyone involved in the court's crisis to be investigated. "If [Alexandre de] Moraes is guilty, he has to pay; if [André] Mendonça is guilty, he has to pay; if Fachin is guilty, he has to pay," the president said, according to Folha.
The next step now sits with Fachin. In this week's ruling, he gave Andrei up to 48 hours to provide information. After that deadline, the chief justice will decide whether the director-general keeps his job.