Leaks confirm Brazilian Report scoop on plans to hack electoral justice

Brazilian hacker Walter Delgatti has reportedly told police that far-right lawmaker Carla Zambelli asked him to hack the phone of Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes last year — facts he personally told The Brazilian Report earlier this year,  as we reported in February (click here to read the story in Portuguese).

Mr. Delgatti is famous for being the hacker behind the so-called Car Wash leaks, which in 2019 revealed a series of irregularities in the anti-corruption investigation that put current President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva behind bars for a year and a half.

The hacker was jailed that year after being found guilty of breaking into the phones of nearly 200 public figures, but was later released on parole. He was arrested again two weeks ago after he was found to have violated several conditions of his parole, including a ban on using the internet.

The arrest warrant reportedly explicitly cited The Brazilian Report’s story, which had provided evidence of this five months ago, describing how Mr. Delgatti continued to work online, including in his jobs for Ms. Zambelli, a hardcore Bolsonaro loyalist.

The news site G1 reported this Tuesday that under questioning by federal police, Mr. Delgatti said Ms. Zambelli approached him in September 2022 to ask him to hack Brazil’s electronic voting machines or, failing that, Justice Moraes’s phone and email. Justice Moraes has been the head of Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court since August 2022. The effort to hack him was apparently part of a plan by members of Jair Bolsonaro’s inner circle to dig up dirt on the top electoral justice and try to discredit him ahead of the election, which Mr. Bolsonaro would lose to Lula.

Our story had already revealed that much, including audio recordings of Mr. Delgatti’s admissions.

In several conversations with The Brazilian Report in February, Mr. Delgatti spoke of his professional relationship with Ms. Zambelli, with whom he said he had a BRL 6,000 (USD 1,228) monthly contract to manage her social media accounts and website.

According to G1, police are questioning Mr. Delgatti in connection with an investigation into the hacking of the National Justice Council’s arrest warrant system, which included the inclusion of a false warrant against Mr. Moraes. In the hacker’s testimony, seen by G1, he told the Federal Police that the creation of the fake warrant was his idea, but that it had been drafted by Ms. Zambelli.

Mr. Delgatti also confirmed to the police that he met with former President Bolsonaro last year, as we had also reported. 

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