Journalist Leandro Demori brings another gritty story from Lava Jato. Suspicions of hacking proprietary Petrobras technology fell on Jorge Hardt Filho and his former colleagues at Petrobras. Jorge Hardt is neither more nor less than the father of Gabriela Hardt, who became famous for having replaced Sérgio Moro in Lava Jato and for having copied parts of the sentence in other actions against Lula. Hardt, the father, coincidentally, was never investigated by Lava Jato.

Gabriela Hardt’s father is a former Petrobras employee and had access to secret oil company information to negotiate technology, which included a confidentiality clause prohibiting the use of this information outside of the contract with Engevix, with whom Hardt worked.

“The suspicions intensified when the oil company searched for new patent applications in Brazil and abroad: here and abroad, Jorge Hardt Filho, João Carlos Winck and João Carlos Gobbo appeared as patent applicants for a process very similar to Petrosix, called Prix. In the commercial descriptions of the Prize, it was presented as a process “having more than 30 years of proven operation”. It was a lie. The Prize, in fact, has never been tested in practice. It is, to date, a paper project. The “over 30 years of proven operation” obviously refers to Petrosix. The Prize was, in effect, an “enhanced Petrosix,” the report notes.

In November 2012, Petrobras created a group to investigate the tech hacking case. The report states that in the report, Petrobras also pointed out that “Engevix contractors João Carlos Gobbo, Jorge Hardt Filho and João Carlos Winck were the people who had access to the information illegally used by Forbes & Manhattan”, a company Canadian that would benefit.

The report also urged Petrobras not to do any business with the company that allegedly benefited from the hacked technology. But the Bolsonaro government did not respect it. Worse. “Two months before leaving office, however, Jair Bolsonaro not only ignored Petrobras’ own recommendation never to do business with Canadians again, but he also sold them Petrobras Six precisely, the same Forbes & Manhattan that tried to thwart the state for years. Forbes paid around BRL 200 million for the plant, which equates to just one year of profit for SIX – and took home the coveted Petrosix technology. One way or another, he won. See the full report HERE.