Rio: “Marina Maggessi Is a Victim of the Police State and the International Communist Conspiracy”

Marina Maggessi: Diehard. Authorized hagiography. Editora Objetiva (Grupo Prisa-Santillana), 2008.

[Maggessi] said she was much more concerned with the present of the MST [Landless Rural Workers Movement] in the Rocinha shantytown than with the activity of militias in Rio. Marina fears a possible alliance between the drug traffic and the MST. “The MST is politicizing Rocinha …”

Deputada diz que foi ameaçada por policiais federais (Agência Estado): Marina Maggessi, a Rio state police inspector and federal legislator, told a Rio state legislative commission on “militias” that she is being “threatened” by the federal police over a wiretap in which she was heard recommending the “whacking out” of an police corruption informant.

Someone later did, in fact, try to whack that informant out. Poor guy lost several fingers, but survived after being ambushed, in classic sicário style, on the Av. Atlántica in Copacabana, in broad daylight.

Maggessi, who recently released an autohagiographical “authorized biography” (above), says she was only speaking figuratively when she used the phrase, “What that guy needs is a whole lot of bullets between the horns” in her conversation with a Rio cop later indicted on organized crime and corruption charges.

A deputada federal e policial civil licenciada Marina Magessi [sic] (PPS-RJ) disse, em depoimento à Comissão Parlamentar de Inquérito (CPI) das Milícias da Assembléia Legislativa do Rio, que deputados federais integrantes da CPI dos Grampos da Câmara estão sendo ameaçados “por grupos da Polícia Federal”.

Federal deputy and state police inspector Marina Magessi [sic] (PPS-RJ) said in testimony to the state legislative commission on Militias that federal deputies working on the CPI of Illegal Wiretaps in the federal congress are being threatened by “groups inside the federal police.”

Marina, que faz parte da CPI dos Grampos, denunciou que policiais federais a ameaçaram com a abertura de inquérito baseado em escutas telefônicas antigas, que registraram diálogos entre a deputada e o policial civil Hélio Machado da Conceição, o Helinho, preso por suspeita de envolvimento em um esquema de lavagem de dinheiro, facilitação de contrabando e corrupção.

Marina, who is a member of the federal CPI of Illegal Wiretaps, charged that federal police agents threatened to open a probe into her conduct based on old wiretaps that captured her conversations with state policeman Hélio Machado de Conceição, known as Helinho, arrested on suspicion of money laundering, facilitating contraband activities, and corruption.

Helinhos was one of the so-called “Inhos,” a group of senior police officials tied to state police chief Álvaro Lins.

Lins ran successfully for the state assembly in 2006, gaining parliamentary immunity against charges he ran a protection scheme for the illegal gambling machines rackets while leading the state police under the Garotinho II (Evita) administration.

Lins was recently impeached and lost his parliamentary immunity.

“More Discredit for Swiss in SuperToucan Affair?”

Embraer's SuperTucano turboprop figher: The Piper Cub of death and scourge of the narco-Cessna Bolivian marching powder air force. Blackwater recently bought a bunch of them, I read. Colombia used them in the "Raul Reyes" Ecuador raid.

A reported settlement between Brazil’s securities regulator, the CVM, and Credit Suisse falls through. The Gazeta Mercantil reports. I could have sworn I read somewhere that this settlement was a done deal.

Between the problems Credit Suisse has had here and the Alstom affair — and the alleged lack of cooperation in assisting Brazilian law enforcement with an investigation into whether senior government officials really had bribe-stuffed Swiss bank accounts, as Veja magazine charged — the Swiss are finding many things amiss in Brazil lately.

On the bribe-stuffed Swiss bank account affair, see

• Dantas’ Inferno: The Disney Version
• Whatever Happened to the Secret Offshore Bank Account of Brazil’s Top Cop?

A Comissão de Valores Mobiliários (CVM) decidiu manter processo administrativo contra o Credit Suisse, acusado de uso de informações privilegiadas no processo de reestruturação societária da Embraer, em janeiro de 2006. Na ocasião, a fabricante de aviões anunciou a conversão de todas as ações em ordinárias (ON, com direito a voto) e a adesão ao Novo Mercado da Bovespa, segmento no qual estão listadas as empresas com práticas mais rigorosas de governança corporativa. A notícia fez os papéis da companhia dispararem no mercado.

The CVM decided not to close an administrative proceeding against Credit Suisse, accused of using inside information during the restructuring of Embraer in January of 2006. At the time, the aircraft manufacturer announced it was converting all its shares to common shares and adhering to the Novo Mercado tiered listing segment of the São Paulo Stock Market, where companies with the most rigorous corporate governance standards are listed. The news drove up the price of the company’s shares.

O banco havia se proposto a pagar R$ 150 mil para encerrar o processo, mas o colegiado da autarquia avaliou que a oferta “se mostra desarrazoada face à gravidade da infração”. No entendimento do órgão regulador do mercado de capitais brasileiro, para atender os requisitos legais, a proposta deveria contemplar, no mínimo, um cálculo dos ganhos auferidos com as operações supostamente ilícitas.

The bank had proposed paying R$150,000 to settle the matter, but the commission judged that the settlement offer “unreasonable given the seriousness of the infraction.” In the view of the CVM, in order to satisfy the legal requirments, the settlement offer must include, at a minimum, the calculation of gains realized from the allegedly illicit transactions.

“In New York, Lula Blasts the Tupi Press”

Lula lá: Kudos for Squid from the IPS. "Ironic," the Estadão editorializes in the news hole.

Em Nova York, Lula critica imprensa brasileira: The Estado de S. Paulo takes some pleasure in reporting that the President of Brazil blasted reporting by its crosstown rival the Folha de S. Paulo on a supposed plan to raise additional capital for the state-owned Petrobras from a social security fund, the FGTS.

Headline in the Editora Abril’s Exame today:

• Government refuses to invest FGTS in Petrobras

The headline just sort of zoomed past me yesterday — I have other things I have to pay attention to these days — so I will have to go back and have a look at the reporting in question.

Apparently the minister of labor made some mention of plans for this contingency and the existence of the planning was taken as proof of the decision.

One general observation I can make, however: When South American governments — Morales, Chavez, Correa, even Uribe — complain that their native press tends to lie and gabble a lot, they are sometimes absolutely right. Lula makes judicious but effective use of this talking point on many occasions. See, for example

• “Someone Found a Chicken Bone and Sold It to the Press as a Dinosaur Bone”: Further Notes on the Cardoso Room-Service Blackmail Dossier
• “The Real Brazil”: The Industrial Revolution Will Not Be Televised

Rule No. 1: Boil the South American press (or any press source, for that matter) thoroughly before certifying it fit for human consumption. Even the most reliable of press sources can sometime catch a dose of bad Chinese milk powder or agitprop emanating from one foreign embassy or another.

At other times, however, the generally bad reputation (again, often well deserved) of the South American commercial news media can serve as a pretext for campaigns to undermine the credibility of what is actually perfectly sound reporting. I have seen some really extravagant examples of this during the campaign silly season here in Brazil, soon to culminate in the October 5 municipal elections.

On the BBC’s own (richly deserved) credibility problems, see also

• Imagine: The (Non-)Borking of a BBC Infotainment Mufti
• “How to Commit Autohagiography By Proxy”: BBC Producer on MediaBistro
• “BBC Business Coverage: Innocent of Bias 2.0!”
• The Sycophantic BBC: Budd on FUD
• BBC 2.0: False Dilemma as a Way of Second Life

Enviado especial da BBC Brasil a Nova York – O presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva lançou farpas contra a imprensa brasileira em diferentes pronunciamentos realizados nesta segunda-feira em Nova York, onde se encontra para a Assembléia Geral da ONU, e afirmou que o povo é ”um juiz sábio”, capaz de distinguir notícias falsas das verdadeiras.

BBC Special Envoy in New York: President da Silva launched some pointed criticisms against the Brazilian press in various public statements made on Monday in New York, where he is attending the U General Assembly, saying that the people are “a wise judge” capable of distinguishing false news from true.