Joao Santana had the nickname of the “maker of presidents”. He was credited with helping Brazil’s leftist ( socialist ) leaders hold power for 13 years. Among those was former president Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva. Silva is presently in Brazil's presidential elections and is the favorite to win.
João Cerqueira de Santana Filho, and wife Mônica Regina Cunha Moura , are serving 8-year prison sentences for million-dollar payments from bribe money in the sprawling Car Wash graft investigation. They received $7 million in bribes by the construction company Odebrecht.
She revealed that Nicolás Maduro, current president of Venezuela, allegedly delivered, when he was chancellor, unaccounted-for resources to Franklin de Souza Martins, former secretary of press of the government of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and the journalist, Mônica Amorim Monteiro, in order to provide advertising services for the presidential campaign of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, in 2012.
The revelation of Santana Filho and Cunha Moura was part of a police investigation opened as a result of the Collaboration Agreements granted to them. In addition, they told the Brazilian authorities that Souza Martins and Amorim Monteiro also received funds, both from the aforementioned Odebrecht and from the Andrade Gutiérrez construction company.
Judge Soares Leite's decision states that the Federal Public Ministry carried out various proceedings in conjunction with the police in order to clarify the case and the analysis of the documentation and hearing of collaborators.
However, the investigations concluded that the evidence did not allow to deduce the occurrence of any crime in Brazilian territory, for which the closure of the investigations was ordered.
This led the magistrate to establish that it was not feasible to continue with the case, since there is no evidence of authorship and materiality, as well as the lack of a suitable line of investigation.
“Despite being suggested by the collaborators, the corroborating elements and the testimonies did not indicate that the resources of 'cash 2' and the leftovers from the Brazilian electoral campaigns were used to pay the services of the collaborators or Franklin Martins in the campaign of Hugo Chávez (...)”.
The Judge cites the failure of the police information.
Judge Soares Leite's decision was also influenced by the fact that the police report stated that the "employees also failed to prove that they received cash from Nicolás Maduro or deposits from the aforementioned construction companies to pay the fees of the companies, employees and Franklin Martins”.
For all these reasons, the court accepted the pronouncement of the Public Ministry of the "absence of just cause for the presentation of the complaint" and proceeded to order the filing of the police investigation.