The name Carlos Augusto Ramos, aka Charlie Waterfall, first rose to national prominence after the publication of a video — recorded by Waterfall himself — in which Waldomiro Diniz, an aide to Casa Civil minister José Dirceu, solicited a bribe.
The money was allegedly intended for the Workers Party and Socialists of Rio de Janeiro. In exchange, Diniz promised to help Ramos with a contract bid solicitation in the state. The video led to the first major corruption scandal of the Lula government.
Subsequent scandals using Veja as their delivery vehicle would emerge from Cachoeira’s private black-bag operations group, run by ex-intelligence officers. (more…)
«Do you know Policarpo Júnior? Carlos hired Policarpo to create a dossier to be used against you. If you release Carlos, we will not make the dossier public.» — Andressa (hearsay)
The story so far: the big chief numbers racketeer of the central Brazilian state of Goiás is accused, among other things, of suborning and planting press coverage favorable to him or unfavorable to his competition.
The numbers racketeer is overheard in many of the wiretapped conversations, discussing the placement of articles with specific media owners and editors and their journalistic minions — including Veja magazine Brasília bureau chefe Policarpo Júnior, shown above lecturing to the Abril journalism course, offered by Veja’s publishing group.
The magazine is outraged by this and related allegations.
In a letter to the editor, the magazine described the allegations as «false, absurd and totally contrary to our ethical standards.». The magazine also said it is taking legal action to “sue the author of this libel, who is criminally slandering the magazine and its journalist».
Someone should add up all the SLAPP suits brought by Abril and Globo and present them in a nice, clean infographic. This would require quite a bit of work. The application of criminal libel and honor laws to any party other than itself is how the magazine has lost much of its credibility over the past decade in this area.
Mrs. Waterfall
The latest development is a story according to which the wife of numbers racketeer Carlinhos Cachoeira — «Charlie Waterfall» — paid a visit to the judge in the case and threatened him with the publication of a dossier on him in Veja magazine.
Sidebar: Mrs. Cachoeira is stunningly beautiful and also chic. She is custom-made for the tabloids in this case. Bikini photos are already circulating. Will Abril and its Playboy Brasil offer her the same deal as Monica Velosos, a Fawn Hall-analogue from a prior political crisis?
At any rate, I translate.
According to the judge in the case, Andressa threatened to publish a dossier if the arrest warrant for Cachoeira was not overturned.
Andressa was brought in for questioning and, after five hours of interrogation, was freed on the condition that she pay R$ 100,000 in bail.
Police began investigating the wife of Carlinhos Cachoeira, Andressa Mendonça, yesterday on suspicion of trying to corrupt the judge in charge of Operation Monte Carlo, which led to the arrest of Cachoeira in February of this year.
The Polícia Federal served arrest and search warrants at Andressa’s home. She was obliged to give a statement and to post bail in the amount of R$ 100,000. She is also barred from contacting anyone investigated in the case, including Cachoeira.
According to federal judge Alderico Rocha Santos, Andressa was in his office on July 26, attempting to obtain a reversal of the arrest warrant and the freeing of her husband.
At that time, according to a report filed with the prosecution, she claimed to have in her possession a «dossier» containing «unfavorable information» about him that would be published by Veja‘s Policarpo in the event Cachoeira was not released.
Head of the magazine’s Brasília bureau, Policarpo Júnior appears talking with Cachoeira on the wiretaps, but federal police say the conversations merely reflect the relation between reporter and source.
Veja can now point to corroboration of its innocent explanation for the intensive contacts between reporter and organized crime boss.
A reader of Brasilianas notes
Today on Bom Dia Brasil (July 31), a report on the case was aired, but at no time were Veja or Policarpo named. The report mentioned blackmail and a dossier, but nothing about Veja or Policarpo.
In the Correio do Brasil, for example, a story picked up from Globo’s G1 news portal.
Federal judge Alderico Rocha Santos told G1 yesterday — 30 July — that he had been blackmailed by Andressa Mendonça, wife to Carlos Augusto de Almeida Ramos, aka Charlie Waterfall.
Santos is presiding over the federal police’s Operation Monte Carlo, which imprisoned the numbers racketeer in February.
The judge said that Andressa came to him on July 26 and said she had a dossier on him which, if he ordered her husband’s release, she promised not to publish.
The judge said he had delivered to prosecutors a piece of paper with a list of names and surveillance footage of her entering and leaving the building.
According to Andressa, the judge said, the dossier had been collected at Cachoeira’s request by journalist Policarpo Júnior of Veja magazine.
Santos also said that Andressas asked to speak to him outside the presence of her attorney. When she persisted, the judge agreed to see her and called one of his assistants in to witness the meeting.
After 20 minutes or so, Andressa reportedly asked that the aide be sent out. «I want to speak to your about my visits to Carlos and about personal matters. I do not want my private life subjected to the scrutiny of third parties». «And so I ordered my aide out of the room,» said the judge.
Andressa then reportedly said: “Your honor, I have some good news for you. Do you know Policarpo Júnior? Carlos hired Policarpo to create a dossier to be used against you. If you release Carlos, we will not make the dossier public.»
According to Vi O Mundo, this latest bit of news has strengthened the hand of congressional investigators eager to depose Policarpo as part of the special investigation (CPMI) into the case.
Policarpo Junior, director of the Brasília bureau of Veja magazine, will be summoned to give testimony to the CPMI investigating crimes committed by the criminal organization led by Carlos Augusto Ramos, «Charlie Waterfall». «With these new developments, the journalist’s relationship with the criminal organization takes center state. We will discuss the summons in our first meeting», said Paulo Teixeira (PT-SP), vice-chair of the commission.
Veteran Folha de S. Paulo columnist Clóvis Rossi reports on efforts to increase the flow of academic exchanges between the U.S. and Brazil.
I translate a selection.
In Dilma’s case, the American hunger for Brazilian exchange students matches the president’s own appetites: she has adopted the program as a personal priority and trumpeted it in all the countries she has visited.
For those who have not heard of the program, Science Without Borders seeks to promote the consolidation, expansion and internationalization of science and technology, driving Brazilian innovation and competition through academic exchange and international mobility.
The overkill death of a man from our neighborhood during a police «blitz» a week ago has faded to page C6 in the Folha de S. Paulo.
The Folha does, however, feature a debate on page A3 on whether the military police should be disbanded or merely reformed. In our last update on the case, a federal prosecutor said he would bring a civil suit demanding the firing of top police brass.
The maximUM overkill of one of our neighbors by the friendly neighborhood military police so far seems to be generating the public pressure the case deserves.
At a public hearing at the federal public prosecutor’s office on Thursday concerning the elevated number of homicides by São Paulo state police agents, Federal Attorney Matheus Baraldi Magnani said that his office would file a civil suit. “It is urgent that we request the immediate dismissal of the military police leadership in S. Paulo.»
And why should civilian leaders not also be asked to step down?
Cleaning up two corrupt and ultraviolent state police forces is, on the other hand, not a job for the faint of heart.
Even so, the SSP secretary — public safety — in Rio, the former federal police agent Beltrame, has begun to have some good success.
Lawyers for the three troopers who fired 7, or 8 — we counted eight, the shooting took place maybe 30 yards from out front gate — bullets into the car of a neighbor have not helped matters much in the public relations department.
«He (Aquino) was behaving just like a miscreant. He tried to flee and the police fired at him to prevent him fleeing. There was no error. Had he stopped when ordered, none of this would have happened», the attorney said.
Preventing flight is not a sensible justification for an overkill shooting like this, and in fact seems to imply that no self-defense justification is possible.
Above: «Mendes appears on a list of slush fund recipients en 1998. The list includes Jorge Bornhausen, Agripino Maia, Walfrido de Mares Guia, the Cardoso reelection campaign, and many others.»
Brazil’s little newsweekly that could brings to light what it characterizes as, roughly translated, «slush fund» accounting documents reflecting payouts to current Supreme Court justice Gilmar Mendes by a Minas Gerais political machine, the same scheme that would later surface in a subsequent election finance scandal involving the PT political party and its allies.
The trial of defendants in the latter case is to commence next week.
CartaCapital is calling for Mendes to recuse himself.
The magazine has, it should be said, been a consistent thorn in the side of the justice, questioning, for example, his relationship with the disgraced senator Demóstenes Torres in another current scandal, the Charlie Waterfall numbers racketeering case. (more…)
The latest in the police shooting of a neighbor of ours, via G1, and I translate …
The state high court of São Paulo ordered the release of three military police suspected of homicide in the death last week of business owner Ricardo Prudente de Aquino, 39.
The men participated in the reconstruction of the crime scene on Thursday, in the Alto de Pinheiros neighborhood, Western District.
This is actually Sumarezinho. The incident took place maybe 30m from our front gate.
From time to time this blog launches an «adopt a corpse» campaign which tries to do a better job of following up on questionable cases of murder and mayhem in the Greater Sambodian Metropolitan Area of São Paulo. These cases tend to fade fast from the headlines, in part because justice is invariably less than swift.
We have chronicled the execution-style slaying of a neighbor on the Rua Beatrice and we have waited impatiently for closure in the case of a citizen journalist killed in the same manner in Porto Ferreira, in «upstate» Sambodia.
[In the latter case, four of five defendants in the murder trial were found guilty in 2010, sentenced to 16 years, and stripped of their commissions in the military police. Yes, in this case as in so many others, the cops were the criminals.]
In this way, we try to harness our obsessive-compulsive tendencies to some practical purpose.
In that same spirit, Época magazine’s Ruth de Aquino summarizes a high-profile police slaying that occurred just last week, literally within earshot of the Lusophone Sousaphone newsroom, on Avenida das Corujas, Sumarezinho.
There was nothing threatening inside the car. A guitar, cooking utensils, papers and a small amount of marijuana: 50 g. The Ford Fiesta was driven by business owner Ricardo Prudente de Aquino, 39. The time was 10:30 p.m.
In the harshest attack yet on the opposing party in this year’s mayoral elections in S. Paulo, the PSDB candidate, José Serra accused the Workers’ Party of espionage, fabrication of dossiers, invasion of privacy and piling on.
Pancadaria is hard to translate. «Thuggery»?
In an interview, Serra also said that PT militants use «dirty blogs» to attack him on the Internet.
“The Nazi SA has a new face here in Brasil: the Internet, the shock troops on the Internet”, Serra said.
This classic argumentum ad nazium is a hangover from Serra’s presidential campaigns of 2006 and 2010.
In 2006, we saw the scandal of the aloprados — «nut cases», as President Lula called them — on election eve. Campaign aides to the PT gubernatorial candidate were arrested while allegedly trying to purchase a dossier documenting misdeeds during Serra’s tenure as health minister. After the election, the charges were quietly dropped.
In 2010, when a striking worker in a Rio shantytown threw a wadded up poster that hit Serra on the head, the campaign machine, aided and abetted by major news media, attempted to blow the incident up into some sort of Kristallnacht moment. They were mercilessly mocked.
Much was made of consulting work performed by specialists from Movements.org and Blue State Digital for the ruling party, but the fact is that all parties threw resources behind Internet-driven campaigning of the kind shown in the Universal series The Good Wife — the PSDB-DEM alliance notably more than others, in fact.
