Michael or Maecenas? | The New Godfathers of Carnaval

Private and principally public patronage of Samba champions 2013

Just when I thought I was out… they pull me back in. —Michael Corleone, The Godfather (1972)

Champion of this year’s Rio de Janeiro Special Group, with an environment-friendly agroindustrial-related theme sponsored in part by pesticide manufacturer BASF, the Vila Isabel escola de samba illustrates the fascinating convergence of world and underworld during the annual delirium.

iG, for example, shines a spotlight on a young Carnaval Maecenas from a venerable jogo de bicho — numbers racketeering — family, Little Wilson Alves, whose father, the legendary Moisés Alves, was tried and sentenced for racketeering in 2006.

Moisés is said to be a leader of the “nickel hunter” — one-armed bandit — gambling machines mafia.

For “is said to be” read “has been sentenced to a very long time in prison for being, and is free pending the result of appeals …”

The story as iG reports it turns on what is something of a forced analogy, however.

Isn’t the son, Wilsinho, similar to the character of Michael Corleone in The Godfather?

Not really.

He does not really seem all that bitter about being pulled back in, for example. It might be fair to say that he seeks to legitimize the family business, but more information is needed.

Source: iG
Excerpt and translation: C. Brayton

At 28 years of age, the son of Moisés Alves admits to being called «godfather», but attributes his standing in the community to the hard work that brought the samba school into the special access group and won it two championships.

CAPTION: The youngest Carnaval society president ever to win a championship, Wilsinho celebrates with Carnaval muse Sabrina.

The youngest escola de samba president ever to win a Rio Carnaval championsip, Wilsinho Alves of Vila Isabel acknowleges the respect and the reverence in which he is held by  members of the escola, but denies that he is a Godfather, “like in the movie”.

During the verification of the votes on Wednesday afternoon, as iG reported, Wilsinho was observed giving orders and receiving all manner of affection and respect from leaders and supporters of the escola.  Some bystanders asked the young man — he turned 28 on Saturday before Carnaval — for his “blessing.”

“I am not Don Corleone, «The Godfather» — a great film, by the way — but as it happens they do call me Godfather, or in other words, President … Our people are humble, grateful. The nickname is similar, but it is not like in the movie”, he told iG, laughing at the comparison.

Bicho + Globo + LIESA = RICO?

Source: O Globo.

RIO — Sunday, as the spotlights fell on the Special Group at the Sambadrome, an operation by state judicial police internal affairs launched 9 days ago found irregularities inside LIESA, the  League of Independent Escolas de Samba.

Entering the office of LIESA president  Jorge Castanheira, police served search and seizure warrants for evidence reflecting the participation of military police officers — among them, majors and colonels — in the provision of internal security for the festivities, contrary to a ruling by the state secretary of public safety.

Among the documents seized during Operation Finger of God II was a spreadsheet listing 37 names of security personnel hired to control access to the passarela in 2012.

At the time, state secretary Beltrame had already issued an order forbidding the involvement of police personnel in this capacity. In defiance of this rule, six colonels, five majors and a captain are listed in the document as security personnel in the employ of  MJC Eventos. The company has a services contract with Liesa and includes reserve colonel Celso Pereira de Oliveira among its partners.

O GLOBO was provided with exclusive access to some of the materials collected from Castanheira’s office. Seized at the location were two laptops, a CPU, a pen drive and a number of documents.

Give My Regards to the Big Turk

The discovery of police personnel moonlighting as Sambadrome security was not the only problem uncovered by the operation.

Among the papers seized was a handwritten letter of two pages, signed by a certain João Luis, which suggests that  the LIESA president is not exclusively busy with organizing the Carnaval parade.

The author says he is involved in a dispute with bicho banker José Caruzzo Escafura, aka Piruinha, and asks Castanheira to intercede on his behalf with bicho banker Antônio Petrus Kalil, aka The Big Turk.

Piurinha and the Rio Police

Piruinha I have heard of only in passing. The federal police union published the following anecdote.

The federal police investigations that resulted in Operation Black Op show that Haylton Carlos Escafura — the son of  José Caruzzo Escafura, a top Rio bicho banker  — relied on the protection of 10 state judicial police patrol cars during a transfer of automobiles belonging to the agency Euro Imported Cars, in Barra de Tijuca, in which he is a partner.

The security scheme was placed at the disposal of the racketeer by a ranking judicial police officer on November 24, 2010, on the eve of the invasion of the Complexo do Alemão. Wiretaps show that  Haylton was afraid that his auto agency would be targeted by rivals in the “nickel-hunter” gambling machine racket.

The intimate ties between Piruinha and state police may explain the fact that Haylton remains at large. He was one of 22 persons ordred arrested by a Federal court in October, when the federals kicked off Black Ops.

GLOBO has had access to excerpts of the wiretaps in which Piruinha’s son discusses the transfer of vehicles with Fábio Dutra Souza, his partner in the business, located on the Avenida Ministro Ivan Lins.

We, The Wise Guys

Returning to the most recent report by O Globo, and the letter leaked to it.

The author of the letter, dated 29 de setembro de 2011, begins by apologizing for pestering the LIESA president, then suggests that  Castanheira is fully aware of the rules imposed by the senior leadership of the bicho rackets of Rio.  “You and the other racketeers, with the exception of José Escafura, who for years now has not respected or enforced the rules of the mafia to which he belongs …”

Bills Were Paid by Bicho Bankers?

This was not the only connection to the bicho racket uncovered by police. During the same operation, police internal affairs, which visited another 13 addresses, discovered seven electricity bills in the name of Castanheira at a bicho operations center belonging to «Captain Guimarães». The discovery suggests that the LIESA president had his bills paid by the Captain.

Sought for comment by GLOBO, Jorge Castanheira denied any involvement with the bicho rackets and said he knows nothing about the letter discovered by police. He also denies that his electricity bills were paid for by “Captain” Guimarães.

— This proceeding is confidential. I have not had access to its content, but the press has. I cannot understand it. I have no ties to the bicho bankers. Today, I am president of LIESA, but for the last 28 years I have worked [as a general assistant]. During those years, I received a degree in economics. I receive hundreds of letters as president of LIESA, but none of them have anything to do with the bicho racket. I have nothing to do with any criminal conspiracy and I don’t know whose electricity bills these are.

Castanheira added that the only electricity bills on which his name appears are related to the offices occupied by LIESA from 1987 to 1995. Regarding the hiring of police to provide security, he said he had asked MJC to give preferential treatment to reserve officers.

Rule Applies to Police Reserves as Well

Despite what Castanheira says, reserve officers of the military police are not exempt from the disciplinary provisions of Decree 6579/83 …  According to this rule, military police must respect the police hierarchy both as current and off-duty or reserve police agents. Thus, Beltrame’s decree applies to retired PMs as well.

The public safety secretary said that it is looking into the irregular provision of services by its personnel during Carnaval. In a note, the department said that since 2008, more than 1,393 state judicial and military police have been expelled by the three internal affairs departments … for various misdeeds.

Finger of God II grew out of an analysis of data obtained during Finger of God I in December 2011. During the second phase, starting on 31 January 2012, the police applied for arrest warrants for bicho bankers Capitão Guimarães and Luiz Pacheco Drumond, aka Luizinho Drumond, both of them former  Liesa presidents.

Their warrant applications were not granted, however.

LIESA, The Untouchable Monopoly

Why not? This is the question that demands an answer when it comes to understanding how for nearly 18 years LIESA has dominated Carnaval in Rio from start to finish, from lighting to ticket sales, from the sound system to every other aspect of the festivities.

Including broadcast rights, which LIESA has ceded to the Globo network despite the best efforts of the state legislature to put an end to its rein.

Bicho + Globo + LIESA = RICO?

I posted a note on that general topic in 2007.

• Rio: “Why Does Globo Monopolize Carnival?”

Historically linked to the bicho numbers racket, LIESA has monopolized the organized Carnaval celebration since 1995. Year in and year out, promises of a competitive public auction have failed to pan out.

Rio mayor Eduardo Paes scheduled such an auction on various occasions and succeeded in conducting one for 2010, but the proposal as passed failed to meet certain requirements of the TCM, the city accounting tribunal.

This year, as I noted recently, TCM justices lost their free access to a Sambadrome sky box on the grounds that the justices should not be benefiting from a contract on which they will eventually have to pronounce judgment.

Unlike what the bicho bankers claimed, the terms as stated were not valid; the auction would have to be redone, but there was not enough time left. Thus did Carnaval 2011 fall back into the hands of LIESA.

Last year, alleging lack of competition in the auction for Carnaval 2009, a Rio court froze the assets of former mayor  Cesar Maia, who hired LIESA R$ 5.3 million.

And therein lies another tale.

Brazil | Building Out the Culture Industrial Complex

 

Source: Estado de S. Paulo »  Portal ClippingMP.
By: Sonia Racy
Translation: C. Brayton

Marcos Prado speaks out about the difficulties of producing films in Brazil, the challenges of distribution, and what comes next.

As the Oscars approach, Mar­cos Prado laments the rarity of Brazilian films among the nominees. Why does Brazil produce such a small number of films?

“I have no precise answer to these questions, but I know from experience how difficult it is to produce movies here,” says Prado, producer of the two Elite Squad films, the celebrated documentary Estamira, and the feature-length Artifical Paradises.

Is it a matter of inadequate marketing? “We lack domestic marketing, as well as strategies for foreign markets and government support,” Prado says.

While awaiting the results of Oscar night, Prado spoke to this column about what he says are exciting new projects.  The following are selections from that interview. .

After Paraísos Artifi­ciais | Artificial Paradises, what is your next project?

I will direct a film called Nó na Garganta | A lump in the throat – about football hooligans. We have already applied to BNDES and are raising other funds. Our budget is R$ 10 million.

We want to show why these young men identify so passionately with their team, their intense way  of life. There is a warlike aspect to this. I want to explore this underworld, which, while it generally involves young men of a more inferior social status, also attracts middle class youth to football violence. We are trying to understand, not to justify or to judge.

Any other projects on the way?

We are working on a screenplay on the life of Brazilian jiu-jitsu master Rickson Gracie — a story about his life, not about fighting, however.

We also plan a film about the invasion of the Morro do Alemão shantytown complex in Rio de Janeiro. Both will be directed by Zé Padilha. The film about the shantry we are provisionally calling The Invasion of the Alemão. The plot will deal with a book by Rodrigo Pimentel and Gustavo Almeida, to be published this year.

Invasion of the Alemão is a play on words: alemão is slang for the military police. Pimentel is a former military police captain and author of the novel Tropa de Elite.

Also emerging from our Pandora’s box: a TV series based on Elite Squad. We are still negotiating with channels interested in airing it.

Neuza was commenting just the other day that Brazil is in the initial stages of a migration from the ever popular novela — soap opera — to U.S. style one-hour dramatic series and half-hour situational comedies.

How did you and Padilha start working together?

We were always fast friends. Padilha was working in a bank. One day, he said to me: “Brother, the Age of Collor has let me down.”I answered: “Not me!”

Of course, the difference was that I had no savings to be confiscated, I was flat broke anyway! And then he told me he had long wanted to make documentaries, as I had been doing for quite some time, He proposed a documentary on coal miners. We eventually wound up make Elite Squad.

Was Elite Squad originally planned as a documentary?

It was, but we wound up producing a fiction because we could not find a way to document what goes inside the police forces. You cannot just sit there interviewing the talking head. That is boring. So Zé spent two years working on the screenplay. And it worked out well. .

Does Ancine work?

It works, but it is a bit slow and rigid.

And what about BNDES?

It helps.And there are other incentives as well, but all of them are expensive. The Brazilian film industry cannnot  become a true industry under the current rules governing Brazilian cinema.

Is it hard to arrange financing for films here in Brazil?

It is not easy. Ancine regulates the movie industry and limits the extent of federal subsidies to  R$ 7 million. There are also state and municipal incentives, which raise this ceiling some, but not very much. The problem is that this level of funding is too low for more ambitious productions.

Brazilian directors are beginning to work overseas. Padilha, for example.

They are going abroad because this is a dream they dream of fulfilling.  Padi­lha is becoming a director well known to the gringo audience and as a result will have more artistic freedom in the future. He is currently making a US$ 100 million film, Robocop 4. He has little artistic freedom, however..

In raising funds through the Rouanet Law, the maximum tax-free donation is R$7 million?

Correct. R$ 3 million of these  R$ 7 million go to distributors — the vast majority  of them subsidiaries of foreign companies. They are allowed by law to reinvest the percentage of box office receipts they would ordinarily remit to their parent company. Exercising this right, they become co-producers. For example: I am a film distributor,  I find myself interested in your project, and so I invest in your film, but only after you sign a contract with me. In this way, I have to give up the portion of the film rights that belong to me.

So that means that onlyh R$4 million in funding is available?

More or less, because this arrangement with the distributors is a common practice virtually everywhere in Brazil. And so you realize that you end up losing more and more of the own rights to your own film. A lot of producers also have to cede rights to investors and others.

For example: if you make a film without the participation of Globo Filmes, your film never gets launched. And so you concede 20% of your own rights and now, because 50% of ticket sales belong to the exhibitors, there is very little left of your share.

Producers have no way of making money off of Brazilian film productions.

On the rise of Globo Filmes, via Wikipedia:

In 1997, in a bid to enter the film industry, the Globo organizations created their own production company, Globo Filmes, a company that sought to rebrand all sectors of the national film industry. In a very short time, Globo Filmes would grow into a major monopoly that ruled the Brazilian film industry. Although its movie division was initially miniscule when measured against its TV networks, Globo successfully entered one of the culture industry’s most important niches, a niche it had never entered before.

Between 1998 and 2003, Globo was directly involved in 24 film productions and its supremacy in this area was definitively established in late 2003, when films produced by Globo Filmes took in 90% of the national box office earned by Brazilian films and 20% of all films exhibited in Brazil, foreign and domestic.

Brazilian box office sales for 2012. Disney leads the way, as it often does.

Is there any way out?

A lot of producers take it out of the salaries …  Along comes Ancine and says you are not allowed to do that. So you have to run an obstacle course to find some way to secure your funding. This is just plain wrong. The film industry has to be able to survive without resorting to such subterfuges.  But it’s not easy.

Did you distribute Elite Squad yourself?

Yes, we did, and we structured the finance in order to receive 70%. We set up a distribution company, called Nossa, in partnership with Conspiração, O2, Lereby and others involved in the industry.  The market liked the structure we came up with and market players cooperated on the creation of an option. The only problem is that this requires the producer to invest in the launch of the film, which the Rouanet law does not permit.  We are trying to reinvent a formula that would allow Brazilian cinema to become an economically viable industry.

What do you think of the competition between DVDs and movie houses?

Movie houses are declining, that much is true. The more purchasing power and technological savvy people have, the more they watch films at home. Still, the principal source of a producer’s income comes from ticket sales.

Government statistics on the market are optimistic, but quotas favoring national and international produtions seem to be slow to respond — judging the diet offered by our own cable TV operator.

The Brazilian movie market is the most vigorous of all the art forms. In 2011, according to an Ancine report, …  some 143.9 million tickets were sold and the gross revenue of movie box office was R$ 1.44 billion, both of them new national records that situate Brazil among the most important markets in the world.

Tickets sold represents a good deal less than one Brazilian per session.  U.S. box office for 2012 was 1.54 billion, or let us call it 5 movie tickets per capita.

“The number of feature-length films launched — 99 — was the highest in the last decade,. says  Ancine executive director Manoel Rangel. After the market began growing again in the 1990s, the Brazilian film industry has consolidated itself. The aesthetic values of its  productions and its alternative cinema are heating up. Competition remains fierce, of course. There were no Brazilian films among the box office champtions in  2012.

Brazilian cinema attendance ranks 13th in the world, with 80,000,000 tickets sold per annum, according to NationMaster. It also ranks 13th in films produced, with 81.

Brazil has 2,098 cinemas, half of them located in the Southeast.

The U.S. slipped to 5,697 in 2011 and has declined steadily since 1995, when it fielded 7,744.

Above: The Brazilian mass market suggests that very few national films obtain Hollywood levels of box office success at home.

«Vivendi Sells Off GVT»

Source:  Portal ClippingMP.

BTG Pactual, the investment bank led by André Esteves, has dropped out of the running for Brazilian telephone company GVT, controlled since 2009 by the French communications and entertainment groupo Vivendi.

At the outset, the company was pursued by four suitors, but that number fell to three when BTG, due to a combination of factors, including … price, as Valor discovered. BTG has no comment on the story. It is believed that Esteves could rethink the company’s offer and rejoin the fray.

The sale of GVT is in its “data room” phase, opening its books to interested parties. Binding offers are expected in February, but in the meantime, the company’s data has undergone constant, though minor, adjustments.

The three groups still in the running are (1) the consortium comprising the American fund KKR, the Brazilian asset manager Gávea —  founded by former Brazilian central bank chairman Armínio Fraga — and Cambuhy Investimentos; (2) Apax, a Brazilian private equity partnership; and (3) the American DirecTV.

GVT has been valued at some R$16 billion. When it decided to sell off its Brazilian holdings, Vivendi decided to offer  between €7 billion e €9 billion for GVT. As soon as bidding began, Vivendi showed signs of a willingness to accept R$19 bilhões, or €6.3 billion.

In 2009, a Vivendi invested R$ 7.5 billion in the purchase of 100% of GVT after disputing the deal with Telefónica.

The value of  GVT as estimated by the interested parties places it above its competitor, Oi, with its R$15 billion in market capital. The Telefonica-Vivo group has a market value of R$55.7 on the São Paulo Stock Exchange | Bovespa.

I wish it were easier to call up share price data from the Web site of the BMF-Bovespa.

Brazilian blog Fusões e Acquisições has been tracking the deal since June of last year.

Vivendi began to consider divesting itself of  GVT after a failed attempt to sell off Activision Blizzard, its digital gaming unit. Sources say, however, that the company was not willing to pay the offer price. “Selling off GVT is no longer a taboo subject and is being discussed internally,”said one source. But Vivendi has not yet hired an investment bank to sell the company off.

Vivendi, a conglomerate whose holdings range from telecom to entertainment, is reviewing its internal structure in order to shore up its falling share price.  Investment banks have submitted investment plans that provide for the sale of business units or the complete dismembering of the Vivendi group.

Valued at  [?]20.5 billion, Vivendi is led by board chairman Jean-René Fourtou, 72, who took over after former CEO Jean-Bernard Levy announced he was leaving last month, citing a falling out among board members over how best to restructure the group.

Vivendi’s share price has recovered somewhat in the meantime, from €13.63 to €17.

Brazilian TV | And Then There Were Three?

From Portal IMPRENSA, an item for a tropical Portuguese Dealbook.

Brazilian billionaire Eike Batista may enter partnership with Rupert Murdoch to buy a TV broadcaster in Brazil.

Excellent: Brazilians will now know what it is like to have a foreigner with deep pockets, murky motives, and Machiavellian methods attempting to influence public opinion in someone else’s country.

Seriously, though: if true, the deal for the SBT network could represent a further erosion of the Globo-Record TV duopoly.  In recent years, SBT has overtaken Record on occasion in the ratings but tends to lose share.

Australian magnate  Rupert Murdoch recently approached  Eike Batista to propose a TV partnership in Brazil, according to Veja magazine’s “Radar” column, dated September 30.

According to the Veja columnist, Murdoch would take a 30% share.

This represents the maximum stake a foreign company may take  in a national media group, by law.

Voz do Brasil | «Authoritarian Hangover»?

Comunique-se reports

One of Brazil’s oldest radio programs, «A Voz do Brasil», is an authoritarian hangover, and commercial radio stations should not be required to air its content.

Broadcasters are also chronically unhappy with the law requiring them to make way for unpaid election campaigning during this year’s election cycle — a step in the direction of election reform, although not a terribly effective one so long as the more fundamental reform of campaign is not enacted and empowered.

This proposition was the subject of heated debate at an August 23 event at the ESPM — Escola Superior de Propaganda e Marketing — among the directors of radio stations Bandeirantes, Estadão/ESPN and Jovem Pan.

Rodrigo Neves, Acácio Costa and Paulo Machado de Carvalho Neto, respectively, argued that requiring stations to air this content interferes with the services the stations provide.

A «heated debate» in which all participants agree on the fundamental question?

Spanish Influenza | The Indian Gifts of Uncle Sam

Viomundo (Brazil) cites recent Wikileaks- and FOIA-based revelations about the influence of U.S. government and private sector support for foreign journalists and news and opinion outlets — in this case, for Venezuelan journalists and publications identified as opponents of Uncle Hugo.

The documents …set forth some US$ 4 million in financing of Venezuelan journalists and media outlets in recent years.

The funds were channeled directly from the State Department through three U.S. public entities: the Panamerican Development Fund, Freedom House and USAID.

In a crude attempt to cover up its activity, State censored the names of most of the organizations and journalists receiving this million-dollar funding. However, a document dated from July 2008 omitted censorship of two of the main groups receiving funding in Venezuela: Espacio Público and the Press and Society Institute — in Spanish, the IPYS.

This is just the sort of story that might be illustrated usefully by analyzing the «link ecology» of such networked collaborations, referencing the ECOLEAD scheme developed by the EU for this type of organization — the CNO, for Collaborative Networked Organization.

The diagram that heads this note, for example, depicts avenues of inflows and outflows — influence and effluence — among loosely joined organizational components.

An egocentric view of the IPYS network reflects a digital distribution mechanism with flows among international bodies — WAN-IFRA — as well as national and local, and management and labor.

Virtual organizations are assembled from interoperable components provided by pools of financial, technical and rhetorical resources.

A regional alliance of press associations, for example, may rely on IFEX, Article 19 or the Chapultepec Declaration in framing the argument in cases specific to its regional concerns, while on another plane such organizations may be mounted and multiplied quickly using pools of technical means — NGO and think-tank toolkits, for example.

Channels are multiplied in violation of the usual logical principle — entia non multiplicanda. The apparent wealth of apparently independent sources for specific cases of advogacy follows the Devil and his dictionary — «My name is Legion».

Digital strategies in a box include the USHAHIDI kit, promoted by American diplomacy and foreign trade evangelism and used for sites such as the PADF. Whether the partial anagram with «USAID» was intentional we shall have to ask the brains behind the non-profit currently in charge of the project.

I HUSH AID

hUh, i SAID

The Tupi Tabloid, Decline and Waterfall

Bicho de sete cabeças: Racketeer «Captain» Guimarães (left) with Rio mayor Cesar «The Naked» Maia (second from left), Carnval 2007.

A steady drip of confidential criminal intel maintains the diversified gambling racketeer Carlinhos Cachoeira — «Charlie Waterfall» — at the top of the Brazilian newshour, 24-7.

The vigorous Rashomon effect observed seems to flow in good part from an upstart regional press seeking local angles on a national story — and more power to them, I always say. But awareness of potential axes to be ground is recommended

When R7 (Record) reports on alleged crooked dealings involving this year’s Carnaval celebrations, for example, you do well to remember that its archrival, Globo, enjoys exclusive broadcast rights to the event thanks to its relationship with LIESA, the league of Rio de Janeiro samba societies.

How independent can the Liga Independente be, however, if it lives at LIESA.GLOBO.COM? See my earlier notes,

• Black Friday for Fat Tuesday, SA?
• Rio Carnaval: Riotur, LIESA Contracts Probed

Curious, therefore, how rarely one hears questions about the broadcast and print behemoth’s ties to what back home would be called a RICO — Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization.

In the Charlie Waterfall case, meanwhile, similar concerns about abuses by media oligopolies have been bubbling up from the «progressive blogosphere» about Abril’s Veja magazine.

Recordings of the racketeer conversing with minions claim that Charlie Waterfall used agents with intelligence and police backgrounds to stage scandals and place journalistic content with the magazine, including numerous bombastic cover stories.

Example: the bribery scandal in the postal service that led to the “big monthly allowance” scandal.

I translate a selection:

In the current case, Cachoeira makes this claim during a call with someone known only as Santana — possibly an alderman from Goiânia — on March 9, 2011 at 6:29 p.m., minutes after Beija-Flor was crowned the winner of the Rio de Janeiro Carnaval celebration.

The police report does not include a word-by-word transcript, but summarizes as follows: «They talked about Beija-Flor’s victory. Carlos had some sort of business with the club, and confirms there had been manipulation of the result,» according to the report.

At the time, the victory of Beija-Flor, which celebrated the career of singer Roberto Carlos in its allegory, was vigorously questioned by samba society directors and Internet users.  The hashtag #marmelada became one of the most commented on Twitter.

R7 contacted Beijar-Flor to ask wheter the charges were accurate. Beija-Flor public relations officer  Hilton Abi Rihan denied any untoward dealings and said that no one at the school knows Charlie Waterfall.

Yes, but Beija-Flor has been supported financially over the years by fellow racketeer Anísio Abraão David — Anśio da Beija-Flor. Anísio was charged in 2007 to threatening Carnaval jurors with death, but never prosecuted.

Teixeira | «End of an Era»

Ricardo Teixeira já era.

Columnist Juca Kfouri dances on the grave of a perpetual Rei Momo of Brazilian soccer.

Ricardo Teixeira is history.

Sergeant Garcia finally arrested Zorro

Brazil, and not just football, has good reason for celebration.

Teixeira is leaving not only  the governing CBF but also, and more importantly, the World Cup local organizing body.

Maybe now we can dream of a more transparent Cup. This adds up to a clear victory for the federal government of Dilma Rousseff.

As to Brazilian football, it must be stated once again that the problem is structural in nature. The identity of whoever takes over from Teixeira will matter not at all; it will be six of one and half a dozen of another.

Teixeira, according to Wikipedia PT-Br,

took over as president of the Brazilian Football Federation, the CBF, in 1989, succeeding Octávio Pinto Guimarães, after defeating then-vice president Nabi Abi Chedid in an election. He found the organization barely capable of sustaining the cost of maintaining the team that would represent Brazil in the 1990 World Cup.

Teixeira’s term of office was marred by scandal, such as accusations of nepotism in the naming of CBF officials; payment for travel by judges and other officials to foreign World Cup host countries; the irregular importation of equipment for his beer business, El Turf, in Rio de Janeiro, after the World Cup of  1994; entering into contracts disadvantageous to Brazilian football, notably a contract with Nike;  concealing monthly income on tax returns for 1991, 1992 and 1993;and concealing income from his two ranches, Santa Rosa I e II, in the Rio de Janeiro city of Piraí.

Teixeira also provided funding for the political campaigns of sports executives, Também deu dinheiro da CBF para campanhas políticas de dirigentes esportivos, in the hope of building a lobby in the national congress, … to defend his own interests — to remain as CBF president and to quash corruption investigations. He succeeded, ensure his reelection in four consecutive elections.

In 1998, he found himself targeted by congressional probes, but, with the help of his faithful supporters, managed to escape all charges. He testified in two congressional probes, including the CBF-Nike investigation. 

TV Cultura | Monday Morning Massacre

Agência Brasil reports.

Changes were announced this week in the programming and staff of São Paulo public broadcaster TV Cultura. Fifty-sex employees of the journalism,, production and other departments will be leaving the station, while Metropolis host Cadão Volpato is on the list of names that will no longer work for the public broadcaster maintained by the Padre Anchieta Foundation.

This overhaul of the work force comes with the announcement of two new programs, produced by the Folha de S. Paulo daily and Editora Abril’s Veja magazine. Critics denounce the move as an assault on editorial independence.

With the departer of Volpato, the host of  «Metrópolis»’ since September 2010, the program will undergo adjustments to its format. TV Cultura management announced that the show will receive a new set and a new anchor, and will be moved to a new hour.

Without naming the new host, TV Cultura says the program will be now run daily and will cover literature, theater, film and music. The broadcaster said that ‘Vitrine’, ‘Entre Linhas’ and ‘Cultura Retrô’ will be canceled to make room for the show.

Also to be canceled is «Great Moments in Sports». Regarding the cancellations, TV Cultura management says these adjustments are normal in the context of the channel’s new phase and points to new programs that have debuted this week …

Regarding layoffs,  Cultura says these are the result of a strategy that seeks to «offer new attractions to the view and adjust programming accordingily. The layoffs drew criticism from the São Paulo journalists union, however. “It is unacceptable for these layoffs to take place just as new employment opportunities are opening up,” said union head.José Augusto Camargo.