Messages collected by Brazil's Federal Police and obtained by Folha de S.Paulo show WhatsApp conversations attributed to André Mendonça, a justice of Brazil's Supreme Federal Court (STF), with Cláudio Castro, a former governor of Rio de Janeiro from the PL party, discussing cases of interest to the politician. In one exchange, on the night of November 11, 2022, they discussed the case of Sérgio Cabral, another former Rio governor, whose habeas corpus was pending before the court's Second Chamber, a five-justice panel that includes Mendonça.
The exchange began at 7:37 p.m. Castro wrote "Friend, I need to talk urgently" and mentioned the "Cabral case". He then sent two files with habeas corpus requests and a release order filed by the defense. Mendonça replied at 8:25 p.m. with a description of the case from the 13th Federal Court of Curitiba, which had ordered Cabral's pretrial detention on corruption charges in the Car Wash investigation. He then wrote "I'll call in a few minutes". Seven minutes later, he sent Castro a link to the STF page for Cabral's habeas corpus.
The 2022 ruling
The contact came at a delicate point in the case. According to Folha, Mendonça had asked to hold the case on October 24, 2022, after the rapporteur, Justice Edson Fachin, voted to keep Cabral in prison. Mendonça returned the case to the panel on November 28, 17 days after the messages. On December 9, he voted to lift the pretrial detention. "Given the long period since the arrest order and the significant change in the factual circumstances, the grounds that justified the custody have become unsustainable," he wrote, as reported by G1. In the other habeas corpus under review, he voted to keep the case before the Curitiba federal court, ruling against the defense.
On December 16, 2022, according to Folha, the Second Chamber lifted the imprisonment by 3 votes to 2. Cabral, in pretrial detention for six years under Car Wash, moved to house arrest with an electronic ankle monitor. According to G1, the former governor had already been convicted in 23 criminal cases in federal courts, with sentences adding up to 425 years and 20 days in prison.
Responses and what comes next
In a statement, Mendonça's office said the justice has no friendship with Castro and that the two met in an institutional capacity, when he served as justice minister. The office also said there is no record of any dealing over the merits of the case. "Such approaches do not change the examination of cases, which is based exclusively on the case files," the statement said. "The vote cast in this case is publicly available, is reasoned and reflects a position the justice applied uniformly in similar cases." Castro, also in a statement, said he raised the possible release of Cabral because of its importance to the state and denied making any request about a judicial case to Mendonça or any other Supreme Court justice. His lawyers said expressions such as "friend", "partner" and "brother" are common in politics.
According to Folha, the messages were collected by the Federal Police in Operation Sem Refino, which investigates suspected favoritism in licenses for the Refit refinery in Rio de Janeiro. Justice Alexandre de Moraes authorized the operation and lifted the secrecy of the case, but the conversations remain under seal; Mendonça is not a target of the investigation. The disclosure comes before the session on Tuesday (September 15), when the full court reviews the Federal Police report that pointed to an alleged relationship between Moraes and former banker Daniel Vorcaro, and decides whether to open an investigation against the justice. Fachin, the court's president, took over that case and sent the investigations into the INSS pension agency and Banco Master to the court's presidency, leaving them on hold pending a new decision.