Federal Police arrest delegate and clerk accused of charging bribes for not investigating. The Federal Court in Rio sentenced Federal Police delegate Lorenzo Pompílio da Hora to 10 years and 6 months in prison for allegedly receiving, in 2017, a bribe to use his influence to close a PF investigation against a lawyer. According to investigations, the bribe was a Fusion Titanium, at the time valued at R$70,000, which was placed in the name of oranges. In the same case, lawyer Marcelo Guimarães (who gave the car to the police officer) and his driver, Luis Henrique do Nascimento Almeida, were sentenced to 3 years in prison. The two reached a plea bargain, and had their prison sentences converted into community service. This process is the result of Operation Tergiversação, which dismantled a criminal organization that operated in the PF Superintendence in Rio. On that occasion, in June 2019, Lorenzo Pompílio da Hora was arrested by the Federal Police itself, but was released a week later. Lorenzo was also one of the federal police officers who accompanied the testimony of military police officer Rodrigo Ferreira, known as Ferreirinha, in the case of the death of councilwoman Marielle Franco and driver Anderson Gomes. The PF claims that Ferreirinha acted with the intention of hindering the investigation into the attack. According to the Federal Public Ministry's complaint, the criminal scheme at the PF Superintendency in Rio operated between 2013 and 2017. It consisted of approaching businesspeople investigated in ongoing police investigations at the Postal Crime Repression Center, or businesspeople whose companies had somehow been cited in the investigations, even if they still had no information about irregularities in their actions, and requesting bribes to favor those being investigated in the ongoing investigation or to prevent the company and its representatives from being reached by the investigations. The investigation indicates that the scheme would have collected around R$10 million in bribes, and that Lorenzo would have kept a sixth of that amount. The investigation In this specific process, the MPF states that, in 2017, Lorenzo Pompílio da Hora and Marcelo Guimarães met in a bar in Tijuca, in the north of Rio, to talk about the Federal Police Internal Affairs investigations against a PF clerk. According to the complaint, Guimarães revealed to Lorenzo that he was very worried about the investigations. The Federal Police chief said that he obtained more information about the investigation from a well-known police officer who worked in the Internal Affairs Department, and that in addition to the PF expert, the investigation also targeted Marcelo Guimarães. Then, the complaint says, Lorenzo asked Guimarães how much he would pay to use "his influence as a Federal Police delegate to put an end to the investigations." And the lawyer offered his newly purchased Fusion, as he knew Lorenzo liked the car. Some time later, in another meeting in the same bar, "Lorenzo, apparently without having done anything, told Marcelo Guimarães that he had resolved the problem with a deputy from the Internal Affairs Department who had been his student." And the lawyer then handed the car over to Lorenzo. The complaint also says that, to avoid attracting attention with the car, Lorenzo asked Guimarães to place the vehicle in the name of someone willing to appear as “orange”. The lawyer put Lorenzo in direct contact with his driver, Luis Henrique. And it was decided that the car would be transferred to the name of Luis Henrique's mother. Lorenzo, however, was worried about using a car that was in the name of third parties on a daily basis, and months later he asked for the Fusion to be transferred to his own wife's name - which was done. After breaking the banking secrecy of those investigated, no debts compatible with the purchase and sale of the car were found in the accounts of Lorenzo, his wife or Luis Henrique's mother. Interrogation 'rich in contradictions' In the sentence, judge Caroline Figueiredo, from the 7th Federal Criminal Court of Rio, highlighted that Lorenzo Pompílio da Hora's interrogation was "rich in contradictions". "In addition to his contradiction with the statement given at the police headquarters, in which he said that the Ford Fusion vehicle had already belonged to his wife and, in court, he maintains that he received the car from Marcelo Guimarães, with whom he referred to not being intimate, it is strange to have such an incongruous report coming from a Federal Police Chief who claims to be so experienced. In Court, the accused Lorenzo Martins Pompílio da Hora said he felt 'challenged' by Marcelo Guimarães when the collaborator pressed him about 'how a Federal Police Chief didn't have a vehicle like that'. For a Federal Police Chief who claims to be experienced, it is notable that he felt 'challenged' just because of a vehicle that, at the time, was worth around R$70,000.00 (seventy thousand reais)", wrote the judge. The judge also highlighted that Lorenzo admitted that he had not paid for Fusion, but that he intended to pay. And even without paying, he decided to sell the car, but ended up being tricked by Marcelo Guimarães as well as the person who mediated the resale of the car. "And, although the accused said that the vehicle only belonged to him after it was transferred to his wife's name, what can be seen from the documentary evidence is that the inspection of the vehicle was scheduled, by the accused himself, when the car was still in the name of the mother of the awarded collaborator, Luis Henrique do Nascimento Almeida", he added. By sentencing Lorenzo to prison in a closed regime, the judge allowed Lorenzo Pompílio da Hora to run free. The judge ordered Lorenzo's loss of public office because "the crimes committed by the convicted man demonstrate a true moral incapacity to exercise public office." What those mentioned say In a note, the defense of Lorenzo Martins Pompílio da Hora clarified that "the conviction is of the first degree and is not definitive, being the subject of embargoes for declaration and future appeal to the TRF-2. The defense maintains that the conviction is based, at its core, on the word of an award-winning collaborator without independent corroboration — an express prohibition in law — so much so that the 2nd Panel of the TRF-2 itself, unanimously, has already blocked another criminal action against the same accused due to the same lack of evidence. STJ annulled, in a similar case, the collaboration of the same whistleblower. There is a procedure initiated by the judge herself to determine the legality of the awarded collaboration and the violation of the terms of the agreement; screenshots and audios – used without expertise and without observing the chain of custody; Marcelo Guimarães' defense declared that he "receives the sentence handed down with serenity and respect, as, from the outset, he has made himself available to the authorities, to contribute to the elucidation of this case, and the other cases that form part of the signed agreement. Also, because his effort in collaborating with the authorities has been recognized, the mistreatment suffered by his co-defendants during the course of the process, as well as the fact that he has remade his life in an exemplary way." Luis Henrique do Nascimento Almeida's defense declined to comment.