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Brazilian justice minister denies links to drug cartel

Xinhua, February 22, 2017 Adjust font size:

Brazil's Justice Minister Alexandre de Moraes, who has been tapped by President Michel Temer as his nominee to the Supreme Court, said Tuesday that he had never been a lawyer for one of the country's largest criminal gangs.

Moraes made the statement in response to a question from the Senate's Constitution and Justice Commission, which is evaluating Moraes' candidacy to take over the Supreme Court spot vacated when Justice Teori Zavascki died in a plane crash in January.

If the commission approves on Tuesday, Moraes' nomination will go to the full Senate.

Moraes said the story that he once represented the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC), a gang headquartered in Sao Paulo, started falsely online when he was the city's secretary of public security.

A law firm, where he was a partner, defended a transport cooperative, which was alleged to have links to PCC but it was never proven, he added.

Furthermore, he said that the firm had only represented the cooperative Transcooper in compensation cases for traffic accidents.

He said that he would seek legal action against those websites and people spreading this "defamation." Endit