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.

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.

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? 

Brasília | Oligopolies Under Observation in 2013

Oligopolies in the Media Market

Source: Folha de S. Paulo | Brasilianas.Org.
By: Vladimir Safatle
Translation: C. Brayton

In recent weeks, Argentina made fresh headlines in Brazil with stories on clashes over the enforcement of Argentina’s so-called “Media Law,” which defines a new regulatory order for companies in the news and entertainment sectors.

Some of these new provisions, and especially those related to combating monopolies, have been viewed as signs of a vengeful State intent on limiting freedom of expression, as in the case of the archrivalry between President Kirchner and the Clarín group.

Leaving aside these heated public conflicts, however, the Argentines are engaged in an important debate that deserves to be treated more dispassionately. It seeks an answer to the question: “Do we or do we not need laws that restrict the concentration of ownership in the media sector?” That is to say, can we successfully argue that concentrated media ownership does not necessarily affect democratic practices?

At this juncture, it is worthwhile remembering that the global media market is currently among the most oligopolized in the world.

What is more, as we gather from  reading between the lines of the recent case involving Rupert Murdoch, this state of affairs really does affect our political life.

Murdoch built an empire of TV stations, newspapers, magazines, radio stations, book publishers, movie theater chains, and Internet portals that gave him the ability to mold debate, pressure governments and interfere in politics to the extent that it promised the American general  David Petraeus its unlimited support should he choose to run for U.S. president.

Situations like this are not exclusive to the Anglo-Saxon world, however. Recent decades have witnessed a brutal, highly negative trend toward consolidation of the sector that affects not only our politics but also our culture.

A single group like Time Warner, for example, exercises simultaneous control over production, distribution and development of new techniques. In this case, we are justified in saying that laws barring the formation of oligopolies is a way for society to defend itself against the coerced uniformity of opinion and the silencing of alternative voices.

Opponents of this viewpoint might reply that a more fragmented market would leave media companies more vulnerable to government pressure. This argument is not without merit.

The solution to this aspect of the problem, however, is not the perpetuation of the other aspect. Strategies are needed in order to prevent governments from framing the news according to their own interests.

In Brazil, this would imply limiting government influence by drastically cutting spending on government advertising — which should be confined to public service announcements — and enforcing laws such as the ban on politicians owning media outlets. Clear and absolutely fair criteria for the use of publicity budgets by state-owned firms should be developed.

São Paulo’s state-owned and publicly traded Sabesp might make an interesting case in point. It frequently walks the corda bamba between public service announcements and government propaganda, as is “this is your current government at work for you.”

But this could be an artifact of my own subjective impression as a couch potato. This might make a good little feature article to research.

Where are all the Sabesp TV spots stored? What PR techniques do they apply? Do they amount to the use of public money to promote a specific administration?

Anyway, I have always thought that the «monthly payola» cases should be combined and subjected to a parliamentary commission of inquiry — CPI — of the PR industry at the heart of these and other scandals.

After all, the exact same mechanism was used in several of these cases: Publicity services were contracted by a state or municipal government for a given cultural or sporting event — Rock in Rio, an Enduro motorcycle event in Minas Gerais — and then publicity fees were accounted for as having been paid to fictional or purpose-built Potemkin village PR outsourcers.

In fact, however, most of these PR funds were skimmed off for use by political and private parties. Enter the hidden camera video of political operators stuffing their socks and jocks with bundles of cash and you have yourself a classic Brazilian “mountain of money” scandal.

In any event, big PR has a demonstrated capacity for financial legerdemain — think of Duda Mendonça as well as Marcos Valério. Perhaps the second most common source of laundered campaign money: state-owned companies like Furnas in Minas Gerais.

The Vanguard of the Obsolete

Gilberto Maringoni e Verena Glass of the IPEA provide a detailed historical narrative of media law development in Latin America, explaining why regulation produced in the 1930s-1960s no longer applies.

Another factor that could not have been anticipated was the invention of digital technology and the deterritorialization of media companies through the use of virtual networks.

Before the digital revolution (1980- 90) news organizations had to be located in the country where they operated. This was not merely an arbitrary legal requirement, based on nationalist developmentalism. At this time, the entire network of businesses, and especially in the advertising sector and media finance, was anchored in calmer waters.

Now, however, an ISP, Web portal or cable TV provider can transmit content from any part of the world, without having to use antennae or sophisticated broadcast equipment.

The main problem is that the ISPs and cable operators are not classifiable as content and information producers as defined by the current, outmoded legislation.

The privatization of Latin American telecoms in the 1980s-90s, opened up a veritable  Pandora’s box. State-owned telephone monopolies were auctioned off. It may be that the authorities who sponsored this policy were blind to the about-face that would make possible a state of borderless media convergence.

Telephone operators, for example, which during the 1990s were limited to long distance voice communication, underwent a consolidation that two decades later would turn them into the biggest Internet providers in Brazil and arm them with the same political firepower as any traditional TV network.

As things stand, TV, radio, telephone, film, literature, music, data transmission, navigation data and many other services can be tapped using nothing more than a single smartphone.  Each of these functions, however, must still comply with rules specific to its sector.

ISPs use technology to produce and distribute content. To the extent that they are not subject to the old legal norms, their content can be produced anywhere in the world and transmitted to any other, with adjustments made for local characteristics [such as  language].

At the same time, now that global media maintains offices in many different countries, a complex series of loopholes in current local laws has been used to legitimate the local operation.

From the same symposium,, Denis de Moraes:

Brazil is in the  vanguard of obsolescence [sic] in terms of its regulation of the media. Its radio and TV regulator remains one of the most outmoded in Latin America. To date, the congress has made no progress toward regulating Articles 220 and 221 of the 1988 Constitution, which respectively ban monopolies in the mass media and gives preferential treatment to TV and radio stations “serving education, artistic, cultural and informative ends,” as well as “the promotion of national and regional culture and a plan of stimuli to independent productions who qualify. .The lack of action by successive governments in this area is just plain alarming.

Media a Priority for 2013

The president of the ruling PT has said that political reform and media regulation are the top priorities of this year’s Congress. The quote is from November of last year.

Rui Falcão said his party has at least two goals for 2013: A new regulatory framework for the media and political reform.

The party will begin to execute its strategy — calling on the federal president to issue a bill that regulates the media —  the party will include the issue in its agenda for the meeting of the national leadership.

Last week, Falcão told the international press that he hopes the presidency will send down a bill regulating communications in Brazil. “It is not our party that wants to pass enabling legislation for these provisions of the Constitution, it is the congress as a whole. We hope that our government will send down a bill establishing a regulatory framework that will increase freedom of expression and eliminate any possibility of censorship of the established media, regulating provisions in the Constitution that have yet to get off the drawing board.”

Softly, With a Big Stick | Rio’s Militias Today

Add to the necessary new readings list:

• No sapatinho: a evolução das milícias no Rio de Janeiro (2008-2011) | Heinrich Böll Foundation.

This book is the result of research performed by the State University of Rio de Janeiro’s Violence Laboratory, with support from the Heinrich Böll Foundation.

The objective of this study is to trace the evolution of the militia phenomenon in Rio de Janeiro, documenting changes to their structure and composition, tracing their territorial extent, and analyzing their profitability, their modus operandi, their perceived legitimacy and their community relations.

As the title suggests — no sapatinho means “wearing baby booties” or, if you will, walking softly with your big stick — these parapolitical groups have adjusted their management practices and continue to thrive.

Bingo! | Delta Goes Down

Source: Delta defines bankruptcy recovery plan — Portal ClippingMP.

In the annals of contemporary Brazilian bribery scandals, probably none are more painful than the saga of the public works contractor Delta and its ties to organized crime boss Carlinhos Cachoeira — Charlie Waterfall, whose principal business is the murky world of smuggling, numbers racketeering, and “nickel-hunter” gambling machines.

One of Brazil’s largest contractors, Delta had been a star player in the PAC — the federal growth acceleration program — and was afforded the honor of joining the consortium to rebuild the Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro.

Now, it would be difficult for it to obtain a bicycle-powered newspaper route.

Delta has since voluntarily withdrawn from Maracanã and most other projects.

A congressional investigation is underway — wrapping up early, actually, after company officials and other parties took the local equivalent of the Fifth — but federal police say they have ample evidence of wrongdoing — including the involvement of journalists in character assassinations of Mr. Waterfall’s enemies..

Delta executives appeared on court-ordered wiretaps discussing how to cheat federal contract bidding procedures and infiltrate regulatory agencies, among other things.

And so the rise and fall of Delta turns out to be a textbook case of moral hazard.

Delta intends to pay its non-financial creditors with equipment. Its plan is to reduce its inventory of idle equipment by reducing the number of projects contracted for since January 2012 by  50%. Banks and financial institutions will receive payment starting in June 2014,  payable in 72 monthly installments and corrected by CDI+1%, according to a recovery plan filed yesterday in a Rio de Janeiro court. The creditors assembly is scheduled for December 7. Bradesco is the company’s largest creditor.

Operation Durkheim | Information Brokerage, Brazilian Style

This criminal enterprise invaded the privacy of at least 10,000 victims, according to federal police estimates

The Brazilian Federal Police announce what promises to be a fascinating case, one that will shed light on what is apparently a thriving black bag political disinformation industry.

São Paulo/SP – Brazilian federal police today [ -- 26 November -- ] launched Operation Durkheim, with the objective of bringing down two criminal conspiracies, one specializing in the sale of confidential information and the other involved in crimes against the national financial system. Thirty-three persons were arrested and 87 warrants were served in São Paulo, Goiás, Distrito Federal, Pará, Pernambuco and Rio de Janeiro.

The investigation began in September 2011 during the course of an inquiry into the suicide of a federal police again in Campinas, in December 2010. The incident suggested that confidential information obtained in police investigations was being improperly used to blackmail politicians suspected of involvement in fraudulent contract bidding.

Journalist Assassinated in Campo Grande

Journo published e-mails allegedly reflecting the buying and selling of judicial orders

Portal IMPRENSA reports:

Late Wednesday night, the owner of electronic news service Última Hora News in Campo Grande, Eduardo Carvalho, was executed in the street in front of his home, according to the Terra news portal.

Eduardo was leaving his home on a motorcycle when he was shot by two men, also on a motorcyle, at around 10:40 p.m. The journalist, a retired military policeman, died on the scene.

Witnesses said that several minutes after the shooting, the two killers returned to the scene to verify that Eduardo was dead. So far there are no suspects or information on a possible motive.

The killers may have returned to police up their brass.

According to Última Hora News, the fleeing bandits dropped a clip of .45 calibre ammunition of the same type used on the  journalist,  The evidence was found by police investigators near the murder scene.

On his site, Carvalho published a number of articles accusing politicians and police of illicit conduct. His reporting was, as a general rule, based on insider information.

IMPRENSA sought site employees for comment, but its calls were not answered.

Carvalho, 51, is said to have carried a .38 revolver after suffering another armed attack, but was carrying it unloaded at the time of the attack.

In a recent case, Carvalho provided evidence to federal police against a local mobster known as «Doctor Joseph» or «Zuzão».

According to Carvalho, Zuzão brokered favorable judicial rulings by judges from the state high court.

In one passage of the recording, Zuzão says he knows who killed the former policeman Serjão, naming rancher Antonio Dameto. In another passage, he said that attorney Paulo Macetti is a confidence man whose business is pitting both sides of a dispute against one another. Judicial rulings are discussed, as was the murder of the journalist Carvalho in Ponta Porã along with his friends.

The material was destined for the CNJ, the ombudsman of the Brazilian judiciary, according to this report.

In a 2010 report, ABC Paraguay referred to Carvalho’s work in a story sketching the outlines of a criminal scheme operating along the Paraguayan border:

PEDRO JUAN CABALLERO. The brother of the man who calls himself the “Godfather” of the Paraguayan border told a Brazilian daily that the weapons, cigarettes, and pirated goods that are regularly smuggled into Brazil will encounter no obstacles so long as brothers José Carlos and Robert Acevedo remain in charge of the senior posts in Amambay.

“If I am partners with him, he uses his influence to look after our shipments of smuggled goods, cigarettes and weapons,” says Nasser Jamil in an article for the Campo Grande daily Ultima Hora News..

The article by Eduardo Carvalho shows that the Acevedos amassed their fortune thanks to smuggling diverse cargos in partnership with Nasser Jamil and developed into a single mob family of border millionaires.

Also in a cursory search of Carvalho’s clipping file: the busting up of a “phony kidnap” scheme.

On 16 November, he published a strongly-worded editorial praising police and prison guards along the lines of “the only good criminal is a dead criminal,” railing against “those human rights assholes.”

In August, Carvalho unleashed a broadside against a competing publication, Mídiamax, which had run a video allegedly showing the state governor meeting with state employees and illegally instructing them how to vote and canvass for one candidate in a mayoral election.

The extrajudicial expert examination of the video, delivered by Governor André Puccinelli (PMDB) this morning at the Campo Grande court house, refutes the Midiamax version of events. The expert examination was signed by Fernando Machado Klein and was exclusively aired by UH NEWS. .

The examination is part of the evidence in the criminal case and adds new facts to the initial accusation brought by Governor Pucinnelli against Midiamax and journalist Pio Redonndo.

The trial seeks to establish the truth and condemn the defendants for having manipulated the reader with sensationalism devoid of objectivity in its reporting on the video, which it presents as the “original.” Attorney Luís Cláudio Alves Pereira has requested the defendants be punished for violations of Articles 138, 139, 140 of the Code of Civil Procedure as well as Article 69., pede em sua peça inicial que ambos sejam enquadrados nos artigos 138, 139, 140 do C.P.P bem como no artigo 69.

These legal references are to criminal libel and related misdeeds.

The governor argues that the meetings were limited to political issues and that there no one was coerced or coached about their politicial choices, and that no one was required to attend the meeting.

Fear of Facebook | «Folha Reporter Sent Into Hiding»

City legislature candidate Colonel Telhada claims 58,000 Facebook likers: expect to find military-grade astroturfing at work.

Here is a case that the Committee to Protect Journalists needs to get up to speed on.

In mid-September, the Folha de S.Paulo decided to send journalist André Caramante and his family to an undisclosed location to ensure his safety.

I read it on  Brasilianas: Vanessa Gonçalves of Portal Imprensa reporting. Translation follows.

Among the most difficult and uncomfortable of journalistic beats — especially for daily newspaper reporters — is the police blotter. The subject is an unrewarding one, and reporting on such events mayh often broach topics that end up displeasing one side or another. Not infrequently, it is members of the police who feel “offended” by press coverage, especially when it deals with such topics as abuse of power, unjustified violence and the actions of militias.

Recently, André Caramante of the Folha de S.Paulo, who has covered t his beat for 13 years, became the latest victim of this imbroglio. Some three months ago, the reporter began receiving threats — some veiled, others not so veiled — from Paulo Adriano Lopes Lucinda Telhada, former commander of ROTA and São Paulo city council candidate (PSDB) as well as from his followers and voters..

Caramante says it all began when the former ROTA chief, displeased with an article by the Folha reporter, used his personal page on Facebook to expression his opinion on the matter “We decided to do a story on Paulo Telhada’s personal page, where he calls criminals suspects “bums” and says they really do have to be killed,” the journalist said.

Press was also applied through the Internet, where a number of people copied and pasted Telhada’s words. “A lot of people provided an echo chamber for Telhada’s writings, and added all sorts of commentary, such as “put a bullet in these bums and anyone who defends them.” The reporter defended his conduct as a journalist and affirms that he shows no partisan bias in which he defends police or criminals. I am not here to defend A or B. What I defend is the enfocement of the law.

Scapegoat

Since then, Caramante has been unable to work in peace. Any and all stories published to the Folha Web site is bombarded with menacing and offensive commentaries. In an August 7, 2012 story, headlined “Two PMs detained after death of robbery suspect, “a reader comments: “I am not calling down a curse on him. But our experienced reporter is going to find himself the victim of a lightning kidnmapping and will have to call Marcola on his cell phone.”

The situation worsened when the blog “Flit Paralisante,” tied to the military police community, published a photo of Folha editor in chief Sérgio Dávila, identifying the man depicted as Caramante, along with an even more sinister message from ex-judge Ronaldo Tovani, whom Caramante had cited in his story as the accused in a case of money laundering:

“The brutal lies of André Caramante have shown their true face. The photo remains on display on Flit for everyone to see and has been viewed by all, including the military police he critizes and slanders. I just hope that no crazy person steps forward looking to take justice into his own hands when he comes across Caramante.”

Caramante says such actions are nothing more than an attempt to intimidate him and the Folha so that they cannot perform their duty to inform.

Freedom of the Press

When it learned of the threats targeting Caramante, the São Paulo state journalists’ union (SJSP) issued a statement aimed at defending the integrity of the reporter and repudiating the verbal violence, as well as calling on the governor and public safety secretary of São Paulo state to intervene.

The SJSP also asked the Folha to provide full coverage of the case in order to inform the public. As José Augusto Camargo, SJSP president, says, “our union has always advised the reporter subjected to such intimidation to report such behavior publicly in order to protect his own person, because impunity only feeds the aggression.”

In support of Caramante, the union also filed a grievance with various state agencies, including police internal affairs, the state’s attorney and the federal human rights secretariate. In response, state police internal affairs will investigate whether Col. Telhada’s conduct was improper in some way. As of the deadline for this story, the investigation had yielded no conclusions.

In the view of federal deputy Protógenes Pinheiro de Queiroz (PC do B /SP), author of Bill 1,078/11, which federalizes crimes against journalists, the threats against André Caramante should be investigated because they represent a form of press censorship. “Any time a journalist or communicator is threatened, the case should be investigated on a federal level because it represents a threat to democratic freedoms and a gag on popular expression,” said Protógenes.

The Colonel: Denials

In an exclusive interviw with IMPRENSA, Telhada begins by saying that he has no score to settle with the Folha reporter. “I am a peace-loving guy. Someone got to talking about the wrong person, and then did not want to hear the truth,” he said. “I think it cowardly and unprofessional for this journalist to write whatever passes through his mind and then to say he is a victim of threats,” said Telhada

Even so, the colonel — once again using his Facebook account — has expressed his discontent with the journalist’s work. On July 15, 2012, in response to a story headlined “Former ROTA chief becomes politician and preaches violence on Facebook,” the colonel commented, on Facebook. “I find it unbelievable that a newspaper with the reputation of the Folha de S.Paulo should keep persons on their payroll who openly defend crime by treating criminals as suspects or civilians. The people know better than this.” When these words were widely reported, the post was taken down.

On July 15, 2012, in response to a story headlined “Former ROTA chief becomes politician and preaches violence on Facebook,” the colonel commented on Facebook. “I find it unbelievable that a newspaper with the reputation of the Folha de S.Paulo should keep persons on their payroll who openly defend crime by treating criminals as suspects or civilians. The people know better than this.”

The usual rhetoric: “civil rights of defendants are a communist plot!”

When these words were widely reported, the post was taken down.

Although he has never met the colonel personally, Caramante says he has spoken with him on various occasions. “We never met face to face, but we spoke a number of times by telephone; as you can read, I oftenquoted him directly.”

The colonel maintains that he never threatened journalists and that the angry reactions suffered by the paper and its reporter come from persons irritated by criticisms of police.

“I would never do such a thing or incite others to do so. The people was upset with this citizen because of the untruths he is always publishing, and harshly criticized him. I never asked or encouraged anyone to do so. I simply said, ‘If you feel offended, send an e-mail to the Folha de S.Paulo.’ And that is what they did. If anyone threatened or offended him, you can sure it was not me,” he concluded

The fact is that the situation has become unsustainable. In mid-September, the Folha de S.Paulo decided to send journalist André Caramante and his family to an undisclosed location to ensure his safety. Though only temporarily, accusations against the colonel have ceased.

Brazil: Federal Police Bust Google Exec

The CEO of Google Brasil, Fábio José Silva Coelho, was arrested by federal police this afternoon in São Paulo, based on an arrest warrant issued by elections tribunal judge Amaury da Silva Kuklinski of Mato Grosso do Sul.

Kuklinski ordered the arrest based on the argument that Google failed to remove videos posted to YouTube opposing the reelection campaign of Campo Grande mayor;

Google claims that users are responsible for the content of the video and for this reason could not comply with the court order.

Source: Estadão.com.br.

The degree of tutelage exercised by elections courts here never ceases to perplex.