Veja Só: The Designated Blogger Thinks Dantas Will Go Free on Appeal

"Dantas is said to be concerned only with the lower courts, given that in the federal court of appeals and Supreme Court he could resolve everything with ease." Source: Jornal Nacional (Globo)

Reinaldo Azevedo, tropical Rush Limbaugh and designated blogger of Veja.com, seems to suggest that the conviction of Daniel Dantas on bribery charges will not hold up on appeal.

The gist of the characteristically specious argument from the Man in the Panama Hat: That Dantas was convicted “is a good thing,” but his conviction was based on spurious evidence.

Does Reinaldo Azevedo really think it’s a good thing to put people away based on bad evidence?

Veja has been accused of conducting smear campaigns and printing disinformation that tended to support the theses of the Dantas defense. These accusations are not without foundation.

The most astonishing of these smear campaigns was a phony “dossier” published in Veja in May 2006 accusing past and current directors of the federal police (and the president of Brazil) of having bribe-stuffed offshore bank accounts.

They don’t.

See

• Nassif, In Disbelief: “The Phony Dossier,” or, Ecce Veja

Avezevdo:

A condenação do banqueiro Daniel Dantas a dez anos de prisão por corrupção ativa merece comemoração. É o primeiro dos processos criminais a que ele responde que logrou chegar a uma sentença – furando a muralha de liminares e outros recursos do sistema penal brasileiro que faz a alegria dos bons (e caros) advogados.

The sentencing of Daniel Dantas to ten years in prison for bribery is worth celebrating. This is the first of the criminal trials that he has faced that has resulted in a verdict — piercing the wall of injunctions and other weapons in the arsenal of Brazilian criminal law that give so much joy and comfort to competent (and) expensive attorneys.

O banqueiro é um personagem que, nos últimos anos, esteve por trás, quando não no centro, de nove entre dez escândalos político-financeiros que eclodiram no país. Sua condenação não deveria, porém, ser maculada por um comportamento que, no Brasil, vem se tornando perigosamente recorrente: aquele que, a pretexto de contemplar “os desejos e aspirações do povo”, acaba resvalando para excessos que beiram a arbitrariedade e que, no fim, ameaçam comprometer a eficácia do Poder Judiciário.

The banker is a figure who in recent years has been behind, if not in the middle of, nine out of ten political and financial scandals that have broken out in Brazil. His condemnation should not, however, be tarnished by conduct that has become dangerously common here in Brazil: An appeal to “the desires and aspirations of the People” that winds up underwriting excesses that verge on arbitrary justice and which in the end threaten to undermine the efficacy of the judicial branch of government.

The phrase in quotes refers to a speech given by the judge in the case which was widely used in the certain sectors of the press to describe him as “Nazi-inspired.” See

• The Authoritarian Temptation of Dr. Fausto: “Dantas Judge Is Nazi-Inspired”
• Dantas Judge: “Dr. Fausto Is Not a Nazi”

Do ponto de vista técnico, é quase um milagre que a Justiça tenha encontrado elementos sólidos para condenar Dantas.

From the technical point of view, it is almost a miracle that the court was able to uncover solid evidence to find Dantas guilty.