On September 14, 2016, Deltan Dallagnol and part of the Lava Jato team made a Power Point presentation of the summary of the charges against Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, placing him as a "conductor of a criminal orchestra" but without offering a structured complaint of head of the criminal organization. The focal point of the controversy was the alleged statement "we have no proof, but we have conviction," which went viral on social networks as if it had existed. Officials said the prosecution was based on immunity negotiated accusations and the theories of "probabilism" and "explanationism" created and defended by the prosecutor himself to support the evidence-free evidence that remained at the end of the investigations.
Investigation of irregularities
Illegal coordination with judge of the "Car Wash" Operation
Starting on June 10, 2019, The Intercept began publishing based on a vast trove of leaked materials, including encrypted messages, "showing highly controversial, politicized, and legally dubious internal discussions and secret actions by the Operation Car Wash anti-corruption task force of prosecutors, led by the chief prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol, along with then-judge Sérgio Moro, now the powerful justice minister for Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro." The reports even exposed that Dallagnol himself was not convinced about the evidence his office was bringing against ex-president Lula mere hours before presenting them in court. These exposés caused an international furor, as they reveal illegal and politicized coordination between Dallagnol and the judge responsible for the operations, which included the imprisonment of Brazil's ex-president Lula. The documents revealed by The Intercept reveal that Dallagnol, his task force, and judge Moro conspired explicitly to imprison Lula in order to prevent him from participating in the 2018 general elections, and continued to coordinate efforts to restrict his access to the press in order to weaken the electoral strength of the Workers' Party candidate running in Lula's place. Dallagnol is now himself under investigation for prosecutorial misconduct.
Disciplinary proceedings
The National Council of the Public Prosecution Service decided in November 2019 to apply the warning penalty against Prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol in disciplinary proceedings after Deltan interviewed a radio criticizing the Supreme Court ministers. Presented by Senator Renan Calheiros, in December, the CNMP opened another disciplinary proceeding against Dallagnol. The proceeding pointed to irregularities in social media demonstrations by Deltan against Renan's candidacy for the Senate presidency, to which he was defeated.
