The Justice of Rio de Janeiro placed under secrecy a complaint of embezzlement against the American deputy George Santos in Brazil. The republican, recently sworn in by a district of New York, confessed to the police that he paid for a purchase of clothes in a small store in Niterói, in 2008, with stolen and bad checks.
The case had been archived in June last year, since the Justice could not locate the defendant. The state Public Prosecutor’s Office, however, asked for the action to be reopened at the beginning of this month, after the politician, son of Brazilians, was elected in the US and then exposed in a report by The New York Times a series of lies in his resume.
The process was unarchived on the 11th, and Santos hired a lawyer, Jonymar Vasconelos, who requested that the action be placed under judicial secrecy.
This Thursday (18), after a favorable opinion from the Public Prosecutor’s Office, Judge Clarice da Matta e Fortes, of the 2nd Criminal Court of Niterói, accepted the request. She also accepted that acts of the process be done through virtual means, asking for the email address and WhatsApp contacts of those involved.
The Code of Civil Procedure defines that processes under judicial secrecy can only be accessed by the parties, their lawyers, public defenders or prosecutors.
The measure is foreseen in four types of cases: in which “the public or social interest” requires secrecy; of marriage, divorce or custody of children and minors; containing data protected by the right to privacy; and dealing with arbitration.
Santos admitted the crime of embezzlement to the police in November 2010. He said he stole the checkbook of a man his mother worked for. On social media, he expressed regret and wrote that he wanted to bear the damage.
Recently, however, he publicly denied having passages through the Brazilian courts. “I’m not a criminal here [EUA]in Brazil or in any jurisdiction in the world”, he told the New York Post, in the same interview in which he admitted that he had lied several times on his resume to deceive voters during the campaign.
The victim at the Niterói store was then salesman Carlos Bruno Simões, 39, now a partner in a Japanese restaurant. In an interview with Sheet last month, he said he was surprised to discover that Santos became a US congressman and said he was interested in pursuing the complaint.
“The crime has not prescribed. If you have a lawyer who can take the case to indicate, I’m accepting it. Who knows how to recover that money, because it’s not worth little”, he said.
A criminal conviction, even for a felony, is not, in and of itself, an act that disqualifies a US Congressman from office. The last time a member of Congress was impeached was in 2002—James Traficant Jr. lost his mandate after being convicted of extortion.
If found guilty, Santos could be sentenced to up to five years in prison, plus a fine.
The series of scandals did not prevent the politician from taking office in the House and even being appointed to committees by the President of the House, Republican Kevin McCarthy. The growing pressure, however, to which was added suspicions about his campaign accounts that could constitute crimes, led leaders of Santos’ own party to talk about the possibility of expulsion.
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