Run DMG: Were Colombian Pyramids Built on Marching Powder?

RUN (ON) DMG: Family, fatherland and easy money are featured in talking headshot of David Murcia, looking presidential as he addresses the Colombian nation on the integrity of his business. Source: EL TIEMPO.

… the senator said, regarding the participation of congress members in this companies, “it must be brought to light, because the legitimacy of Congress must be preserved.”

DMG niega nuevamente que tenga vínculos ilegales; presentará a sus socios hoy en rueda de prensa: DMG, a peculiar financial institution in the middle of the ongoing collapse of an Albanian-style pyramid scheme in Colombia, “denies yet again that it has illegal ties and will present its partners today in a press conference.”

La comercializadora fue intervenida la madrugada del lunes por el Gobierno por sospechas de captar dinero ilegalmente y de lavar activos del narcotráfico con el pago de altos rendimientos.

The company was shut down on Monday morning by the government on suspicions of illegally capturing deposits and laundering money for the narcotraffic through the payment of high rates of return.

As some blogger asked last year:

Has anyone heard about DMG in Colombia. They aparatly pay upto 150% of what you invest with them on their ‘pre-pay’ card system? i,e, deposit 10mill COP now & in 6 months receive 25mill – is this too good to be true? Has anyone tried it.

If it seems too good to be true, it generally is.

It is notable how thoroughly “DMG denies charges” seems to be beating “DMG is charged” in terms of the amount of coverage in the local press.

“Nosotros no somos criminales ni estafadores, ni una ‘pirámide’ (financiera)”, aseguró a ‘radio Caracol’ David Murcia, fundador y representante de la empresa que ofrece rendimientos de hasta 150%.

“We are neither criminals nor con men, nor a pyramid scheme,” David Murcia, founder of the company that offered 150% rates of return on deposit, told Radio Caracol.

Según Murcia, el cierre de 60 oficinas de la empresa en 20 ciudades colombianas afecta a unas 200.000 familias que invirtieron sus recursos en DMG, que sus directivas aseguran es una comercializadora y no una captadora ilegal.

According to Murcia, the closing of 60 DMG offices in 20 Colombian cities will affect some 200,000 families that invested their funds in DMG, whose executives say is a trading company and not an illegal financial scheme.

Rio-Sampa Mafia Corruption Case: Secret Hearing on Hurricane Judge

Supremo vai decidir futuro do ministro Paulo Medina: The Brazilian Supreme Court will decide this week whether to accept the indictment of a federal judge accused of selling a judicial verdict in favor of the Rio gambling mafia for R$1 million.

The federal police busted a whole bunch of lawyers and judges for providing liquidity to this black market in justice during the so-called Operation Hurricane. See, for example,

• Brazil: Hurricane Blows Up the Toga

It will be interesting to see how Chief Justice Mendes votes in the case. In recent ex parte remarks to the press, he said, in effect, that federal police efforts against organized crime during the tenure of Paulo Lacerda as director have tended to be sensationalist, politicized, media-driven empty shows of efficiency that brought no real results, in terms of convictions. Seriously.

The Hurricane case was as sensationalist and media-driven as they come. The agent in charge went on Globo’s Sunday infotainment newsmagazine Fantástico to boast about the case, for example (see above).

The policeman used the spotlight to lay a real bombshell on the Globo journalists: He said that the competitive parades for Carnaval 2007 (Globo has the exclusive worldwide broadcast rights) had been rigged, a fact discovered during the Hurricane investigations.

See

• Brazil: Hurricane Blows Lid Off Hummingbird Hype?
• Rio: “Carnaval Judging System Was Tom(Jobim)foolery-Proof!”

Now, finally, a chance to see whether the judge who allegedly took R$1 million from the mob can get a fair trial after being perp-walked in humiliating wise by TV Globo — as Daniel Dantas and Celso Pitta also recently were, to the outrage of Mendes — or whether Mendes will be true to his public statements and let his toga’d colleague off the hook.

O plenário do Supremo Tribunal Federal vai decidir, em sessões extraordinariamente secretas, marcadas para amanhã e quinta-feira, se recebe a denúncia do Ministério Público Federal contra o ministro do Superior Tribunal de Justiça Paulo Medina – afastado de suas funções desde julho do ano passado – acusado de negociar – por intermédio do irmão Virgílio, que é advogado – uma decisão liminar que liberou 900 máquinas caça-níqueis apreendidas em Niterói, em troca de propina de R$ 1 milhão.

The full panel of the Supreme Court will rule, in extraordinary secret sessions scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday, whether to accept the indictment handed down by the federal prosecutor against Paulo Medina, a justice of the [federal circuit court of appeals] — suspended since July of last year — who is accused of negotiating through his brother, attorney Virgilio Medina, an injunction that released 900 “nickel-hunter” gambling devices seized by police in Niterói in exchange for a bribe of R$1 million.

Dantas’ Inferno: “R$18 Million in Bribes to Judges, Politicians and Journalists”

Daniel Valente Dantas. Graphic: Veja magazine, May 2006, when it reported: “Daniel Dantas has a list that may show illegal offshore bank accounts controlled by the president and party bigwigs.” Veja had plenty of evidence that “almost certainly does not” was the word to use instead of “may.” Ecce Veja.

“Our target acts in a highly strategic manner. When we seized his laptop (at his home), there were handwritten notes: At the federal police, go see so-and-so, talk to so-and-so. In the courts, go see so-and-so. For the journalist, we will hire Mangabeira to approach the news media. It was all charted out there.”

The Brazilian news media is overrun with information, presented as journalistic reporting, whose principle motivation is to serve the commercial interests of third parties, without the reader, viewer, listener or Internet user being made aware of this. –Ricardo Kaufmann

Satiagraha: Documentos apreendidos mostram que propinas chegariam a R$ 18 milhões: In the case of Daniel Valente “The Quiet Brazilian” Dantas, leaks continue to dribble out from the recording of a three-hour meeting between federal police leadership and the lead investigator in the case.

Over the weekend, Veja magazine, echoed by the Estado de S. Paulo and Folha de S. Paulo, published very highly selective excerpts from the conversation in which the investigator was interpreted as admitting he bugged the Supreme Court to obtain information on Dantas’ legal defense strategy.

The recordings were delivered to federal legislator Raul Jungmann last week — I know I read that, in Noblat and Josias de Souza, the Hedda Hoppers of Brazilian online disse que disse cut-and-paste journalism, I think — although Veja (typically) does not state a source for its information on their contents.

Today, O Globo lets another (sensational) aspect of the recordings dribble out: the police at the meeting discussed alleged evidence that R$18 million in bribes were paid to politicians, judges and journalists by the Dantas organization.

If that were really true — the version of the preliminary report that leaked out referred to an appendix specifically on the so-called “Dantas communications system” –I wonder what journalists got bribed?

It seems astonishing that a news organization (Veja, for example) with access to the full conversation would only report information helpful to Dantas’ defense while pointedly omitting information not necessarily helpful to it.

Or it might seem astonishing, if you were not familiar with the sort of so-called journalism practiced at the Editora Abril’s flagship newsweekly.

A verdict is expected shortly on charges that the Dantas organization attempted to pay off a federal police agent for US$1 million to keep it out of the so-called Satyagraha case and incriminate a business rival. The agent reportedly set up a sting operation and filmed the bribe being negotiated, Abscam style.

RIO – Documentos apreendidos na Operação Satiagraha indicam a existência de um esquema que movimentava R$ 18 milhões apenas em propinas para políticos, juizes e jornalistas. A revelação foi feita pelo delegado Carlos Eduardo Pelegrini Magro, um dos responsáveis pelo inquérito que resultou na prisão do banqueiro Daniel Dantas, durante reunião de três horas com a cúpula da Polícia Federal, no dia 14 de julho. Os registros desse encontro começaram a ser publicados pelo GLOBO no último sábado

Documents seized during Operation Satyagraha indicate the existence of a scheme that paid out R$18 million in bribes to politicians, judges and journalists. The revelation was made by federal police investigator Carlos Eduardo Pelegrini Magro, one of the investigators in the case that led to the arrest of banker Daniel Dantas, during a three hour meeting with senior federal police officials on July 14. The transcripts of this meeting began to be published in O Globo last Saturday.

Apparently, O Globo is edited by the same people that produce the media conglomerate’s TV soap operas.

Rather than giving it to you all at once, they feel the need to keep the reader in suspense. Will Débora flash her tits as promised? Tune in for the next episode! Same bat time! Same bat channel!

Open Outcry: BM&F Trader Shoots Self In Futures Pit

Operador tenta suicídio no pregão: A trader at the BM&F, Brazil’s principal commodities and future exchange, shoots himself Getúlio Vargas-style in the trading pit.

The exchange in downtown São Paulo has metal detectors, but apparently traders are not subjected to them.

Another great piece of PR for the Sambodian private security industry: The heavy security scheme mounted to protect the Biennial of the Void, for example, was an astonishing fiasco, while (yet another) shooting of an unarmed kid by an armed mall shopping guard has become a poster-child case for questioning the adequacy of oversight of the private security industry here.

São Paulo, 18 de Novembro de 2008 – A tensão no pregão viva-voz da BM&F Bovespa, que costuma naturalmente ser elevada, chegou a níveis extremos nesta segunda-feira. Um operador da Itaú Corretora tentou suicídio dentro do local onde são realizadas as negociações por volta das 15h30, ao disparar contra si um tiro no tórax.

Tension in open outcry trading at the BM&F-Bovespa, which tends to be high enough already, reached extreme levels on Monday. A trader for the Itaú brokerage house attempted suicide on the trading floor around 3:30 p.m., shooting himself in the chest.