Former attorney and former deputy Deltan Dallagnol negotiated with US authorities the apportionment of amounts charged from Petrobras related to fines and penalties resulting from a corruption scheme. According to UOL and the A Grande Guerra website, the negotiation was carried out in secrecy and did not involve the Comptroller General of the Union (CGU), which is responsible for monitoring this type of situation in Brazil.
The conversations that demonstrate the negotiation were found by the Brazilian Federal Police as part of Operation Spoofing, which investigated the hacking of messaging applications by prosecutors and former judge Sergio Moro.
The negotiation took place between Brazilian and Swiss prosecutors, since the authorities in Bern, the capital of Switzerland, were investigating the accounts used to allocate money from corruption. US authorities were also included in the talks, as US Justice was investigating the cases.
On January 29, 2016, for example, Dallagnol told Swiss authorities that Petrobras would reach an agreement with the US court system to pay a fine of US$853.2 million in order to avoid prosecution. A year earlier, Dallagnol received at least 17 American agents in Curitiba without the knowledge of the Ministry of Justice, which should have been informed.
During the conversations and meetings, Operation Car Wash prosecutors suggested to the US authorities mechanisms to circumvent a decision by the Brazilian Federal Supreme Court (STF) that prohibited the American Justice from hearing informers involved in Petrobras processes. It was on the basis of these conversations that the United States later managed to hear Nestor Cerveró and Alberto Youssef, albeit in Brazil.
Dallagnol was alerted in 2016 about the conversations and visits by attorney Vladimir Aras, who was in charge of the International Cooperation Secretariat (SCI) of the Brazilian Attorney General's Office (PGR). He replied that it would not be “convenient” to pass the agreements through the Executive Branch.
“The issue is not one of convenience. It's legal, Delta. The treaty has the force of ordinary federal law and assigns intermediation to the MJ [Ministry of Justice]. We are negotiating with the Senate a specific path for MPF [Federal Public Ministry] cases. For now, we need to observe the current rules”, replied Vladimir Aras.
