The Death of Roberto Civita | The Man Who Would Be Murdoch

Via Brasilianas.Org

Roberto Civita has passed away.

Civita was the key figure in bringing American journalistic standards to Brazil, convincing his father to create news and information magazines.

The first of these was Realidade. According to journalists who worked with him, such as Luiz Fernando Mercadante, the young Civita had sound journalistic sense, and handled the importation of U.S. entertainment models with talent.

Sometime thereafter came Veja, copying the model of a U.S. journalism product.

The editorial standards adopted were based on those of Time. They consisted of treating news as though it were melodrama. On Monday, a planning meeting would be held in which the articles with most appeal to the readers would be selected. The issue was planned in accordance with criteria that made the news more attractive to read. Then the reporters would go out in search of quotations that confirmed the theses predefined and defended by the magazine.

Rio | Beginning of the End for Black Market Taxes?

Judicial Police in action against militia members, November 2009

G1 reports on the sensational feat  of locking up dozens of military police for organizing themselves into what amount to militia groups — protection racketeering, mostly.

Agents from the Sub-Secretariat of Intelligence of the state security secretariat and the internal affairs agency of the military police, in coordination with GAECO, the state prosecutor’s special organized crime task force, last night began an operation designed to arrest a gang of criminals — most of the military police — who were extorting street merchants and informal van services in Bangu, in the Western Zone, and neighboring areas.

Of the 78 persons charged by the state prosecutor, 59 are policement: 53 from the military police and six from the state judicial police. The policemen involved worked out of different units: the 14 Miltary Police Battalion (BPM)(Bangu), the 9th BPM (Rocha Miranda), the 31st DP (Bangu) and officers assigned to the task force on crimes against intellectual property, designed to combat street vendors.

Eucatex | Twilight of the Maluf Family Empire?

If Mexico can finally imprison Elba Ester Gordillo, why shouldn’t the Brazilian finally bring down the notorious M.A.L.U.F?

The following excerpt is translated from the Estado de S. Paulo |  Portal ClippingMP. File it under «political grotesques».

SÃO PAULO – A São Paulo court has ordered the freezing of R$ 520 million from the Maluf family business Eucatex.

Or about US$ 260 million.  Eucatex, a eucalyptus grower, was founded by in 1951, thrived under the military dictatorship — which named Maluf mayor of the capital and later governor of São Paulo state. He is featured in a World Bank list of 150 notable corruption cases.

The measure was taken at the behest of the São Paulo state prosecutor’s office, which denounced insider transactions within the Eucatex group as part of a fraudulent effort to transfer Eucatex assets off the books and avoid payment of future court-ordered reimbursements as a result of various law suits against Maluf, accusing him of embezzling public funds while serving as mayor of São Paulo.

[The court] found that the prosecutor’s indictment demonstrates “the possibility of fraudulent reporting of assets” by Eucatex, but the ruling may be overturned if Eucatex can show that the penalty will drive the company into bankruptcy.

As the Folha de S.Paulo revealed in March, the prosecutor’s office believes that the family is trying to escape payment of court-ordered monetary awards by transferring assets to a newly founded member of the group, ECTX. Prosecutors see the transaction as fraudulent and believe its purpose is to “dehydrating” Eucatex of its assets.

Back in March, Eucatext VP José Antônio Goulart de Carvalho, denied the accusation. Goulart said the asset transfer to ECTX was undertaken because the new company would represent the vanguard of a new, more transparent governance model.

In July 2012, Eucatex transferred R$ 320 million of its assets to ECTX. In May and October, Eucatex released a Material Event statement to the market, saying it had initiated a “process of share reorganization” in order to transfer its assets.

ECTX, according to Goulart de Carvalho, is waiting for CVM authorization to launch an IPO in the capital markets.

Legal Troubles

Eucatex and the Maluf family are defendants in a case in which prosecutors have moved for the return of US$ 153 milhões that was supposedly stolen from the São Paulo city government, wired overseas and then funneled into Eucatex through various financial transactions.

There is also an open case on the Isle of Jersey involving the transfer of money by Maluf family members.

Overseas companies with ties to the Malufs have been ordered to reimburse US$ 28 million to the city of São Paulo, funds thought to be the fruit of fraudulent dealing involving the city government. These companies have appealed the decision.

In the present case, the Jersey court also ordered the freezing of Eucatex shares belonging to foreigners with ties to Maluf.

In a statement, Eucatex says it was not officially notified of the asset freeze involving R$ 520 million as ordered today by the São Paulo court.

There is another open case against Maluf, in fact, O Dia notes:

In the federal Supreme Court, Maluf and family were charged in 2011 on allegations of money laundering and using Eucatex to camouflage the misappropriation of public funds during Maluf’s term as mayor, from 1993 a 1996.

Maluf’s status as a sitting federal legislator entitles him to be tried by the Supreme Court.

Without Notice

In an official statement, the company says the motion to block its accounts has already been applied for by the prosecutor in 2009, and the application failed both in the first instance and on appeal.

According to Eucatex, the accusation is groundless given that the company’s net assets increased after the cretion of ECTX, from R$ 997 million in 2011 to R$ 1.1 billion at year’s end 2012.

“It should be recalled that Eucatex is a publicly traded corporation, with hundreds of shareholders, among them the federal legislator Paulo Maluf, who is not an executive of the company or even a member of  the board of directors,” the company added.

True: it is currently led by Maluf’s son Flávio. Interpol has an open arrest order on Flávio, from what I read. Otávio Maluf is chairman of the board.

The creation of ECTX was part of a general restructuring of the company with the goal of qualifying for the Novo Mercado listing segment of the São Paulo Stock Exchange, reserved for companies with superior governance standards and practices. The new company has been waiting since December for the CVM to rule on its registration as a publicly traded company.

«40 Questions for Yoani Sánchez»

Opera Mundi relays 40 questions for Yoani Sánchez concerning her current world tour, posed by Salim Lamrani of the Université Paris-Est Marnes-la-Vallé.

I offer you a completely draft-quality, madly dashed off, translation of the item. 

The Ruralist | Potemkin Villager or Hero of Soviet Labor?

«Chemicals are the true friends of agriculture! They will provide us with centuries of grain!» —Soviet propaganda poster, 1965

I read it in the Folha de S.Paulo and used it to practice the WordFast online and Java editions.

I am surprised not to read more about this issue in the mainstream press. Carnaval is something of a sacred cow, obviously, despite worrisome ties to the underworld.

Columnist, lobbyist and federal Senator — all at once! — Kátia Abreu explains the importance of Vila Isabel’s victory in this year’s Carnaval parades in Rio.

Who is Kátia?

Kátia Abreu is a federal senator (PSD-TO) and leader of the rural benches of the Brazilian congress. She serves as president of the lobbying group CNA, the Confederação da Agricultura e Pecuária do Brasil. She writes a weekly column in the Saturday edition of the  ’Market’ section.

Recalling the background: 

Rio | The PPP of Pistolagem

Patricia Acioli, a Rio de Janeiro state lower court judge known for her uncompromising opposition to death squads, was gunned down in Niterói in 2011.

Patrícia was driving her Fiat Idea when she was surprised by men wearing ski masks, traveling in two cars and two motorcycles. At least 15 gunshots from .40 and .45 pistols struck the judge, who died on the scene.

The judge had handed down prison sentences to state military police troopers (PMs) from São Gonçalo, in the greater Rio metro area. The men were charged with kidnapping drug dealers, murdering them, and then demanding a ransom for their safe return.

Patrícia also remanded to custody PMs accused of staging crime scenes involving armed confrontations to conceal the summary execution of criminal suspects.

The judge’s name figured on the “blacklist” of Wanderson Silva Tavares, aka “Gordinho,” arrested in Espirito Santo in January 2012 and accused of heading up a death squad in São Gonçalo that had killed at least 15 persons in three years.

The troopers also face adminstrative punishment for privatizing the armory of the battalion — replacing rounds fired with fresh rounds in order to eradicate evidence in shooting cases.

F&A | Ruy Moura’s Breakfast Reading

It has always surprised me that Brazil’s gargantuan and complex business ecosystem   seems unable to produce something along the lines of Dealb%k — an exemplary use of that in-the-moment blog format that keeps readers checking in periodically throughout the day, rather than simply reading it once through and lining the parakeet page with the leftovers.

The business pages of the major Brazilian dailies are heavy on macroeconmic trends, market movements, and the like — stuff you can cover sitting on your ass in front of a Bloomberg Box —  but very light on hard business stories with real protagonists and consequences: Company X overcomes Problem A to accomplish Objective 1.1, or Bank C offers Subsidiary Z to Company Y for X gazillions.

Only the largest economic groups and deals get such coverage, which is not much use to the venture cap, hedge fund or M&A guys who fish a smaller pond — and whose activities are newsworthy themselves, to boot.

So, then, a Brazilian Dealb%k?

The plain old Blogspot Fusões & Aquisições is a step in the right direction, although I  wish it would publish a masthead and take itself seriously as a journalistic source.

Its principal analyst — its only analyst, it seems — appears to be Ruy Moura, founder of Acquisitions Consultora Empresarial Ltda.

Moura’s daily clipping file has climbed to the top of my breakfast reading list, along with the planning ministry’s clipping of various media sources, broken down by topic and searchable.

I think there is a substantial editorial market for the Dealb%k style of coverage.

The only potential competitor I can think of in the Brazilian editorial market is Relatório Reservado, a one-page tip sheet circulating daily to a private circle of subscribers and relying heavily on market rumors.

Exame magazine has a deal flow blog that is useful to check in on as well.

This is the sort of story I find myself missing: 

Water Over the Dam | Will Investors Take the Plunge?

Source: Brasil Econômico | 24 January 2013
Tenor: Market is moderately cautious over energy-sector pricing reform
Excerpt | Translation: C. Brayton

Negative pressure on shares is transitory and reflects the continued uncertainty of investors. The BM&F Bovespa’s electricity and energy sector index (IEE) is down 1%.

The reduction in energy bills announced by the president on January 23 has had a limited negative impact on the shares of electricity generators, transmitters and distributors.

Pedro Galdi,chief analyst at the SLW Corretora brokerage house, explains that the government has already absorbed part of the losses suffered by some companies. 

Post Mortem Ergo Propter Mortem | Citizen Journalist Down

How much has changed since the Globo reporter’s 1992 exposé on São Paulo’s Maluf-era “police who kill”? Not much.

Ever since a group of military police riddled an entirely inoffensive neighbor of ours with bullets just a few yards from our front gate, I try to jot down other cases of this kind — the kind traditionally known as “resistance followed by death.”

To be fair, on January 9, the state trotted out a less Orwellian formulation: death as the consquence of an interaction with police, roughly. A note of mine from 2010 provides some of the context,.

• Post Hoc Ergo Non Propter Hoc: “Resistance Followed by Death Cases” Rise Sharply

True to form, the case of Mr. Aquino, our neighbor, has faded quickly from the headlines.

• The Aquino Case | Fallout Hits the PM
• The Aquino Killing | Policing Up the Brass?

Another receent case in point — one with a citizen journalism angle to it — was the posting of an amateur video showing a São Paulo military police officer shooting a visibly unarmed and compliant suspect in the back, somewhere in the Southern Zone.

As soon as that footage came out on YouTube,  an amazing coincidence occurred: across the street from the previous crime scene, there was an extreme-overkill execution in which something like 50 rounds were expended on a man claiming authorship of the video, as he sat with friends in the local bodega, across from where the original crime occurred. The assailants reportedly entered the bar shouting, “Police!”

So what next? 

Where is the Cash for Carnaval?

In certain Brazilian cities, the theme music for 2013 ought to be the famous Carnaval march “Me dá um dinheiro aí“ — Give me some money! — by the brothers  Homero, Glauco and Ivan Ferreira.

A vintage clip of the marchinha in question is provided, above.

Assuming, that is, that Carnaval will be celebrated in those towns.

Related story: São Luiz do Paraitinga, famous for its syncopated brass band music, outlaws funk during Carnaval celebration

Saddled with debt by previous administrations and tightening their belt accordingly, incoming mayors continue to cut funds allocated to the escolas and the blocos, which has meant the postponement or even the cancellation of traditional celebrations. All because of a budget shortfall.