Sergio Moro

Sergio Fernando Moro (born 1 August 1972) is a Brazilian jurist, former federal judge, college professor, and politician.

He was elected as a member of the Federal Senate for Paraná in October 2022.

Moro got a law degree from State University of Maringá in 1995.

During his studies, he interned in a law firm for two years, being described as a "sensational person" by the lawyer who hired him.

In 1996, Moro started teaching law graduates at his alma mater, the Federal University of Paraná.

He attended a summer course at Harvard Law School in 1998, including studies on money laundering promoted by the US Department of State.

This very same year, he became a federal judge in Porto Alegre, before moving to Joinville, Santa Catarina, in 1999.

He received his master's degree in 2000 from the Federal University of Paraná with the dissertation "Development and Judicial Enforcement of Constitutional Norms", guided by Professor Clèmerson Merlin Clève.

In 2002, he completed a PhD in State Law at the same institution with the thesis "Constitutional Jurisdiction as Democracy", guided by Marçal Justen Filho.

Between 2003 and 2007, Moro worked on a case involving the public bank Banestado.

The investigation resulted in the arrest of nearly 200 people for tax evasion and money laundering.

Moro was born in Maringá, son of Odete Starke Moro and Dalton Áureo Moro, a former professor of geography at the State University of Maringá, who died in 2005.

His elder sibling, César Fernando Moro, owns a technology company.

His family is of Italian, German, Portuguese, Spanish and Polish descent.

His Italian forebears were from Veneto: his great grandparents came from Breganze and Sandrigo in the Province of Vicenza.

Moro's family moved to Ponta Grossa when Sergio and César were children.

In 2007, he participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program in which he visited U.S. agencies and institutions responsible for preventing and combating money laundering.

In 2012, he worked with Rosa Weber, a minister of the Brazilian Supreme Court, in the Mensalão scandal.

Weber called him because of his experience with cases involving financial crimes, more specifically money laundering.

In 2014, while working in Curitiba, Sergio Moro became one of the head judges in Operation Car Wash (Operação Lava Jato), a massive criminal investigation that started as a money laundering case and evolved to a huge corruption scandal crackdown, involving bribery and misappropriation of public funds by political authorities.

The investigation was modeled after Mani pulite in Italy.

Corruption scandals in Brazil usually take a long time to be investigated and the legal processes tend to stagnate.

However, at an unusual speed, Moro authorized further investigations, detentions and interrogations of suspects.

In 2015, he gained national attention as one of the lead judges in Operation Car Wash (Operação Lava Jato), a criminal investigation into a high-profile corruption and bribery scandal involving government officials and business executives.

By late 2017, at least 120 sentences were carried and 175 people were sent to jail.

Despite some criticism from fellow jurists for being a "media darling", Moro enjoyed high popularity with the Brazilian people and became one of the main faces in the fight against corruption in the country.

Despite criticisms regarding the high speed with which he imposed sentences in such a complex case, his actions were backed by the Brazilian Supreme Court and most of his sentences and decisions were upheld in higher courts.

On 29 October, shortly after the 2018 Brazilian general election, President-elect Bolsonaro nominated Moro to be Minister of Justice and Public Security.

On 1 November, Moro accepted the job after personally meeting with Bolsonaro.

His appointment to Bolsonaro's cabinet and the way he had previously conducted Operation Car Wash (in particular former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's case) drew praise from his peers and a significant portion of the Brazilian society.

However, it also faced significant criticism, especially after allegations of partiality and judicial misconduct on his part were published by the American investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald, during the Car Wash investigations.

Moro was also Minister of Justice and Public Security under the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro from 2019 to 2020.

Moro left the government in April 2020, mentioning the President's undue interference in the affairs of the Ministry of Justice and Public Security.

Then in 2020 he worked with the firm Alvarez and Marsal for almost one year.

Since his retirement from public service, leaked messages exchanged between then-judge Moro and Brazilian prosecutors resulted in widespread questioning of his impartiality during the Operation Car Wash hearings; Moro has publicly disputed these allegations.

On March 9, 2021, the habeas corpus trial was resumed in the Supreme Federal Court that questioned his impartiality, with two judges, Gilmar Mendes and Ricardo Lewandowski, voting that Moro was indeed biased, including the vote of these two last for the payment of a US$40,000 fine and the court costs of the lawsuit filed against Lula.

Later, in 2022, the United Nations Committee agreed with the STF that Sergio Moro was biased in all cases against Lula.

After leaving the judiciary and the Bolsonaro government, his first case as a lawyer, in 2020, favored controversial Israeli businessman Beny Steinmetz, in a dispute against mining company Vale S.A.

In the same year, Moro was hired as a partner by the consultancy Alvarez & Marsal, judicial administrator of the recovery process of the Odebrecht Group – the company targeted by then judge Moro during Lava Jato.

Moro worked for Alvarez & Marsal for almost one year and was paid approximately half million dollars.