The lawyer hired by Republican deputy George Santos to defend him in an embezzlement case in Brazil was convicted of participating in an extermination group linked to the former “van mafia” in São Gonçalo, in the metropolitan region of Rio de Janeiro.
Jonymar Vasconcelos, 47, was sentenced to 18 years in prison in 2007 by Judge Patrícia Acioli, who was murdered four years later by militia police. In 2004, the lawyer was paid to kill a mechanic who refused to repair kombis for free and could not accept being expelled from the transport cooperative.
On December 3 of that year, around 6:30 am, four men on two motorcycles went to the house of Aristeu Vieira de Mattos, surrendered his wife and shot him in front of his brother. Vasconcelos remained on the motorcycle, awaiting execution, according to the Public Ministry.
At the time he committed the crime, the lawyer was a 3rd sergeant in the Navy. He lost his functions in the Force by decision of the magistrate and, years later, he was licensed by the military Disciplinary Board.
“It appears that the accused is a member of the Armed Forces and, in this condition, would have greater responsibility in complying with the law. And, on the contrary, he uses his condition to inflict fear and barbarism in the community where he lives, together with third parties ,” wrote the judge.
Wanted, Vasconcelos says he has already responded for the crime and that the process has already been extinguished. He served about five years in a closed regime, until 2009, when he progressed to house arrest and started studying law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). His sentence was extinguished in June 2022.
THE Sheet asked George Santos if he was aware of his defender’s past and how he found him, since he is not connected to a law firm nor does he have contacts listed on the internet.
Vasconcelos represents Santos in the case in which the politician confessed to having used stolen and bad checks to buy clothes and shoes in Niterói, in 2008 — reopened when the lies about the deputy’s resume began to be revealed. On the last 18th, the lawyer managed to keep the action confidential, as revealed by Sheet.
In response to the report, Santos first wrote, by message, that he did not understand Portuguese, despite being the son of Brazilians and having lived in Brazil for years. When questions were sent in English, the deputy failed to respond.
Vasconcelos claims that the client found him for his good performance in court. “George came to me by recommendation, seeing the number of processes in which I successfully act. I have success in more than 350 processes that I have participated in”, he says.
After he graduated, the lawyer even tried to have his sentence of intentional homicide reviewed and annulled by the Jury Court, claiming the emergence of new evidence. The Justice of Rio de Janeiro, however, upheld the conviction. According to him, the case is now in Brasilia.
In addition to this, the defender has three other criminal notes with the Civil Police. The first of them is from 1994, when he was arrested in flagrante delicto for bodily injury and threat, armed, but acquitted after an agreement between the parties. The last one, by another threat, is from 2010, when he was still serving his sentence, in a lawsuit filed six years later.
Between these two records, in mid-2008, his name was included in an investigation that investigated a criminal association and another contract murder. At the time, a long investigation by Draco (police station for the repression of organized crime) ended in a mega-operation that arrested more than 30 people for their involvement with the van mafia.
The group was headed by retired Navy sergeant and then councilor of São Gonçalo Edson da Silva Mota, known as Mota da Coopasa, and two of his sons.
Months before that operation, the name of Jonymar Vasconcelos appeared in an anonymous complaint to the Hotline: Judge Patrícia Acioli was informed that the then prisoner was planning his death. The Court of Justice investigated this and other threats and concluded that the judge did not need security guards. Three years later, she was murdered.
The lawyer says that all these facts were investigated, and his innocence was recognized. “The prosecutor himself found it absurd [eu ser acusado de ligação com a máfia]because at the time I was in prison”. The report, in fact, did not find a complaint in his name.
Regarding the alleged threat to the judge, he claims that there is a dispatch from former judge José Murta Ribeiro, then president of the TJ-RJ, confirming that he had no relation to the case —he, however, did not send this document when asked by the Sheet.
“Dial-Denunciation anyone can do. So much so that the people who were accused of the judge’s death have already been convicted. I was not even indicted or questioned about it. On the day [em que ela foi morta]I was miles away, and everything was investigated by the homicide police station”, he declares.
Eleven military police officers from the 7th Battalion (São Gonçalo) were convicted of the murder of Acioli, the only female judge in the city’s criminal court at the time. She was killed with 21 shots in an ambush when she got home, in Piratininga, an upscale neighborhood in Niterói.
Questioned about the lawsuit against Santos in Brazil, the lawyer says he was not authorized by his client to give interviews.
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