In March 2014, five years after being rewarded by Lula with a seat as a Supreme Court justice, José Antonio Dias Toffoli reappeared at the University of São Paulo (USP) Law School to grace a reunion of alumni and newly arrived freshmen with his presence. At these types of gatherings, between bites and sips, people tell stories worth a place in the amusing anthology of audacities, adventures, and extravagances involving people who studied at the old academy. By the middle of the celebration, Dias Toffoli decided to elevate the humor of the guests with a story starring one of his classmates. “Once, Vladimir ‘rob’ a case file to avoid eviction,” the narrator began, with a smile stretching from one ear to the other, from his chin to his sideburns.
(That’s a bad start. A good storyteller never laughs first. The most seasoned ones don’t even laugh after the audience does. Toffoli went on. “A friend of ours, Vlad… ‘Lesn’t say’ his name. Vladimir… Vlad… ‘lesn’t say’ his last name.” Another pause. The small audience tried to recover from the blows to the Penal Code, kicks to the cultured language, and drunken ellipses that foreshadowed the fiasco of the parade of vowels and consonants. Right from the start, it was clear that Toffoli didn’t know what any janitor at USP Law School knows: robbery and theft are not the same thing).
Robbery is the act of taking someone else’s property using violence or threat. Theft is characterized by taking someone’s property without violence or threat against the victim. Vladimir, with or without a last name, did not ‘rob’ a case file. What he did was steal the paperwork related to an eviction case. Anyway, judicial documents were pilfered. The assaults on legal codes and the language didn’t stop there. In just over three minutes, the justice swapped “in which” for “where,” taught that invaders of private buildings should be called “occupants,” and celebrated the happy ending: Vladimir escaped punishment thanks to the quick help of a buddy judge.
All in all, both Vlad and all the colleagues who participated in the action committed crimes. Worse: it became clear that a Supreme Court justice finds delinquencies that harm and demoralize the judiciary very amusing. For these and other reasons, Toffoli failed, in 1994 and 1995, two attempts to become a judge. For further reasons like these, Lula saw in an incapable person capable of anything the Bachelor of Laws he had been looking for since childhood. From then on, this native of Marília (São Paulo) has done what he can to save the president of the Republic, the president’s friends and their children, the bigwigs of the PT (Workers’ Party), and their accomplices guised as members of other parties from the danger of being put in prison.
His rap sheet shows that, prior to being awarded the robe, Toffoli was a legal consultant for the Unified Workers Central (CUT), a parliamentary advisor for the PT in the São Paulo Legislative Assembly, a legal advisor for the PT leadership in the Chamber of Deputies, deputy chief for Legal Affairs of the President’s Chief of Staff, head of the legal team for the PT’s presidential campaigns in 1998, 2002, and 2006, and, from March 2007, head of the Attorney General’s Office. In October 2009, Lula decided that, at the age of 42, the lawyer who was barred from leading the smallest court in São Paulo had the impeccable reputation and notable legal knowledge to act in the Supreme Court for another 33 years. It’s as if the coach of the Brazilian National Football Team had chosen as a starter a player from the under-20 category who had failed twice to move up to the main team.
Toffoli seemed uncomfortable in the High Praetorium until the release of the video showing what Marcelo Odebrecht had said in his testimony recorded during the hearing procedures of Operation Car Wash. At a certain point, one of the inquisitors asks who the character appearing under the alias “Friend of My Father’s Friend” in the bribery department of Odebrecht (now Novonor) is. “It’s Toffoli,” Marcelo responds. This revelation helps to understand the immediate and fierce counteroffensive launched by the then-president of the Supreme Court. Always turning his back on the Constitution, laws, and common sense, he was the one who tried to censor Crusoé magazine, came up with the “End of the World” inquiry, promoted Alexandre de Moraes to “Police Chief of the Supreme Power,” and informally proclaimed the dictatorship of the judiciary branch.
At the moment, Vladimir’s friend is doing everything he can to return to the businessmen lifted from the swamp of the Petrolão by Operation Car Wash the product of the billion-dollar theft they promised to restitute in leniency agreements that kept them out of jail. The total value of the fines Toffoli suspended amounts to almost R$ 14 billion. The J&F default reaches about R$ 10.5 billion, and Novonor hasn’t restituted R$ 3.5 billion. The bleeding has just begun. Confident in this surge of “dollarized compassion,” dozens of whistleblowers are demanding the same amnesty. None of them had to cut expenses on private jets, banquets, and mansions. Thus, they don’t want to stay away from the office that makes it rain money. And they are already aiming to get back the sums recovered by Operation Car Wash. Until 2022, according to the Federal Prosecutor’s Office in Paraná, 43 leniency agreements and 156 plea bargains guaranteed the restitution of R$ 24.5 billion to public coffers.
This week, perfecting the pose of someone who read Das Kapital (in German) still in nursery, Fernando Haddad, minister of Finance, once again lamented the insensitivity of the super-rich. “It’s complicated to tax great fortunes,” he admitted. He said that this group keeps making up tricks to avoid Brazil’s IRS, from which not a single Brazilian—in a universe ranging from the upper middle class to the vast number of people below the poverty line—can escape. Equally creative, Haddad aims to convince the G-20 members to unite in an international effort to tax multibillionaires. Either this or, perhaps, asking for a donation from the justice who became the patron saint of multimillionaire sinners. The aid could finance an advertising campaign that eliminates the anguishing doubt: is “fiscal framework” a new video game or another defensive system created by a Portuguese football coach?
