SAO PAULO (AP) — Brazil’s federal police raided locations in several states Wednesday in an operation against a criminal gang accused of plotting to kidnap and kill public officials, including the former judge who presided over the country’s biggest corruption case.
Some 120 officers complied with 24 search warrants and 11 arrest warrants in the states of Sao Paulo, Paraná, Mato Grosso do Sul and Rondonia, police said in a statement, which did not name the suspects wanted or who they wanted to kill.
A Federal Police official confirmed that one of the targets of the plot was to be Senator Sérgio Moro, who as judge presided over the bribery and money laundering case known as “Lavajato,” which began in 2014 and eventually involved the current President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The source asked not to be identified as he was not authorized to speak about the matter in public.
Moro claimed on Twitter that one of Brazil’s most notorious drug gangs, known as the First Command of the Capital, wanted to kill him in retaliation. He thanked police and said he would issue a statement later Wednesday.
From 2014 to 2018, Moro was the lead judge in the Lavajato case, which led to the arrest of prominent politicians, including Lula, who served more than a year in jail, though the ruling against him was later overturned. In 2019, Moro became justice minister under then-President Jair Bolsonaro, but he left the government in April 2020 and won a senatorial seat last year.
The local press, including the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper, reported that the criminal organization targeted by the police raids was the First Command of the Capital. Neither the police nor the Ministry of Justice confirmed this information.
Justice Minister Flávio Dino wrote on Twitter that a senator and a prosecutor were among the targets of the “homicidal plan.”
Federal police last year investigated a plot by the First Command of the Capital to kidnap public officials in order to exchange them for Marco Willians Camacho, the imprisoned leader of the gang, according to a report by the online media UOL.