Gilmar Mendes keeps data order in Flávio Bolsonaro aide case

Gilmar Mendes keeps data order in Flávio Bolsonaro aide case
Supreme Court Justice Gilmar Mendes has rejected an attempt by Danielle Mendonça da Costa da Nóbrega, a former aide to Flávio Bolsonaro in Rio de Janeiro’s state legislature, to overturn the lifting of her banking and tax secrecy. The records are being sought in a civil misconduct case examining an alleged rachadinha scheme, in which staff salaries are purportedly partly returned to an office.

The account published by a right-leaning outlet focuses on the procedural basis for Mendes’s decision. It says the justice found the challenge inadmissible because ordinary avenues of appeal had not been exhausted. Mendes also concluded that the case contained “autonomous and independent” evidence supporting the order, beyond a financial-intelligence report from Coaf that the defence had challenged.

That evidence, according to the ruling as reported, includes employment records, financial reports supplied by the legislature and messages lawfully obtained from da Nóbrega’s phone during Operation Intocáveis. Mendes said those sources were sufficient to uphold the constitutionality of the disclosure order and found no indication of an exploratory investigation, often described as a fishing expedition.

A left-leaning account places greater weight on the allegations investigators drew from the material. It reports that WhatsApp exchanges were cited as indicating that da Nóbrega did not perform the duties associated with her legislative post, which she held from 2007 to 2018. The report also notes her defence’s argument that the measure infringed privacy and data-confidentiality rights.

Mendes’s response, as both accounts describe it, was that the restriction on those rights was appropriately limited to her period in the appointed role and was necessary and proportionate. He also rejected the argument that Coaf’s report required prior judicial authorization, saying it had been spontaneously communicated and incorporated into a properly opened civil inquiry.

The two reports therefore converge on the legal outcome: the secrecy order remains in force. Their difference lies chiefly in emphasis—one foregrounds the procedural safeguards and independent evidence, while the other foregrounds the alleged conduct that investigators say the evidence reveals.

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