AGU career groups defend agency and criticize attempt to cast suspicion on Messias

Organizations representing the legal careers of Brazil’s Attorney General’s Office have publicly defended the agency led by Jorge Messias, escalating an already tense dispute with the Federal Police.

The statement followed a Federal Police report recommending “targeted monitoring and data collection” concerning Supreme Court Justice André Mendonça and his relationship with Messias. Folha reported that tensions had already emerged over Messias’s position in proceedings involving the Master case and investigations into Lulinha before the court.

The associations said legal measures adopted by the AGU can be debated and subjected to legal criticism. But they rejected the idea that the agency’s role should be to endorse claims advanced by other institutions. “What is not appropriate is to turn a disagreement over legal strategy into grounds for suspicion before knowing and assessing the technical and legal reasoning behind the institutional decision,” the statement said.

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What is not appropriate is to turn a disagreement over legal strategy into grounds for suspicion before knowing and assessing the technical and legal reasoning behind the institutional decision.

The document, signed by public attorneys and prosecutors from the AGU careers, said the agency’s work is guided by law rather than personal relationships, political affinities or short-term convenience. It also distinguished between investigating possible wrongdoing by a lawyer and treating the ordinary practice of law as a reason to place that lawyer under suspicion.

The report’s allegations about the relationship between Messias and Mendonça came after the justice openly supported Messias’s nomination to the Supreme Court.

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There is a difference between investigating possible wrongdoing by a lawyer and turning the practice of law itself into grounds for placing him under suspicion.