The Attorney General’s Office (PGR) once again asked the Brazilian authorities to send the case of former PSD deputy Duarte Lima, but this time on paper, after years of waiting for recordings to be sent.
In a response sent on Thursday, February 12th, to Lusa, the PGR said that it asked “the Brazilian authorities to send the physical process”, and there is still noaccording to the process consulted by Lusa, response from Brazil.
This new request, this time for the process to be sent in physical and not digital format, was made following an order from the Public Ministry, on January 6th of this year and which came after Duarte Lima’s defense challenged the start of the trial even without the recordings requested from Brazil and which were never sent.
I don’t dispatch, Attorney Maria do Rosário Pires understood that, “considering that the missing elements are relevant to the discovery of the material truth and a good decision of the case”, it should be requested, “with a very urgent note, the sending of the original of the process transmitted in its entirety”.
If this is not possible, the Public Prosecutor’s Office accepts the option given by the defense of Duarte Lima, who proposed in November last year that the missing procedural documents be requested, not only from the Saquarema Court, as has been the case, but from the courts through which the process passed – the Rio de Janeiro court, the Supreme Court of Justice and the Federal Supreme Court.
At the beginning of November 2025, the judge of the Sintra Court responsible for the case, Carlos Camacho, admitted that “in view of the inability of the Brazilian judicial authorities to transmit the process in its entirety (…) it remains to move forward to the discussion and judgment hearing”.
This decision led Duarte Lima’s defense to contest a possible start of the trial without all the procedural documents. “One cannot believe that the Brazilian authorities insist on not sending evidence that precisely (and surgically) proves what the defendant does not have to prove: his innocence”, wrote lawyer João Barroso Neto.
Given the lack of evidence – which includes three seized cell phones and recordings of witness statements – Duarte Lima’s defense also raised the possibility of sending the case back to Brazil.
Former deputy Duarte Lima was accused of the murder of Rosalina Ribeiro, in Brazil, in 2009. The start of the trial was scheduled for November 2022, but has been postponed – first due to a lack of notification of witnesses who are in Brazil and then due to the lack of recordings.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office believes that Duarte Lima received amounts transferred by Rosalina Ribeiro into his bank account, which were related to Lúcio Thomé Feteira’s inheritance.
The former PSD deputy reportedly insisted that Rosalina Ribeiro sign a statement stating that the money transferred belonged to Duarte Lima. Given the refusal, the Public Ministry argues, Duarte Lima would have killed Rosalina Ribeiro.
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