The Touchables | When the Anti-Organized Crime Squad is an Organized Crime

Photo: O Dia, Rio de Janeiro

O DIA of Rio de Janeiro reports:

Rio – State judicial police internal affairs director Gilson Emiliano Soares arrived early this morning at the state police anti-organized crime squad, DRACO. He was taking part in a raid on the unit alongside other police, one day after the state police chief, Allan Turnowski, ordered the unit closed after receiving allegations  that DRACO officers were engaged in illegal activity and had closed some cases in return for pay-offs..

Police from the SWAT team, CORE, are standing guard at the door of DRAC, and no one is allowed in or out, to avoid destruction and theft of evidence.

Soares says Turnowski was also told that DRACO officers had closed cases related to business interests and city government.In this morning’s raid, agents are gathering documents, computers, files and incident repots that might reflect these violations..

DRACO chief Cláudio Ferraz is also taking part in the raid. Under his command, the unit has been credited with the arrest of more than 700 “militia” members, most of them fellow judicial and military pollicemen. He is a trusted adviser of state public safety secretary  José Mariano Beltrame, and will be named this week to head the secretariate’s counterintelligence branch..

According to Turnowski, the closing down of DRACE was his own decision, which was then communicated to Beltrame.

The activity stems from the federal police operation Guillotine, which has now arrested 38 of 45 wanted suspects — – including judicial and military police.

Reports that bribes of R$100,000 were being paid had suggested that very high-ranking officers could be involved. .

One would expect some parallel operations would begin to take place in São Paulo, which is in no way a more law-abiding city than Rio.

Port Seguro | Insurance Firm Forms Phone Farm

MVNOs: quite simple, really.

The Porto Seguro insurance group announced today it has signed a deal with TIM, the Italian-owned Brazilian cellular operator, to co-launch a virtual cellular network.

Wow. I did not see that one coming. Porto Seguro is our car insurance provider and a darn good one at that, by the way.

So how is thatt going to work?

EXAME reports.

The joint venture will avail itself of a 2010 ruling by ANATEL, the Brazilian FCC, authorizing the formation of virtual operators, or MVNOs. In this scheme, one company may use the calling facilities of a cellular operator to sell telephone services under its own brand.

” Porto Seguro Telecomunicações and TIM Celular have signed an infrastructure sharing deal that will provide person mobile telephone service over a virtual network,” Porto Seguro said in a press releasee.

Datora Telecom, which will also specialize in the sale of calling minutes, says it has an interconected network “of more than 100 operation” joined together by VoIP connections. The company is controlled by  Chaicomm do Brasil Holding, which recently took a stake in Porto Seguro Telecomunicações.

So, really, TIM made a deal with Chaicomm.

Who is Chaicomm Holding? It is presided by one Tomás Henrique Fuchs, so far as I can tell, and lists the same Av. Brigadeiro Faria Lima address as Latam Comunicações Ltda. — of which no one has ever heard, so far as Google knows.

Jucesp — the local equivalent of the corporate registry run by our Secretaries of State — knows of a Chaicomm with R$10,000 in capital, listing its business activities as consulting and unspecified information services.