The investigation into Brazil’s former national president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was on Thursday taken over by the country’s Supreme Court and out of the hands of Judge Sergio Moro who has been leading the Petrobras corruption probe, according to the Associated Press.
Earlier this month prosecutors charged Lula – as the former president is popularly known – with money laundering and misrepresentation in accounting for alleged gifts of beachfront property.
It was a sidebar of the ever-expanding Petrobras scandal in which former executives of the state oil company took bribes from contractors in return for inflated contract awards.
The scandal has also embroiled members of the governing Workers Party accused of taking kickbacks.
Thursday’s Supreme Court decision was to not return the case to Judge Moro, who Lula’s supporters accuse of being politically motivated.
Observers say the Supreme Court is less likely than Moro to order that Lula be detained pending the inquiry.
The Supreme Court’s decision came a day after Judge Moro admitted in a letter to the Court that he had been wrong to release an audio recording of a phone conversation between Lula and the current, embattled national president Dilma Rousseff.
