Rio | New Man With Plan For Van

Black-market van stuffed with 10 armed, black-clad corpses, December 2007, Rio

Source:  R7.

On December 5. Rio de Janeiro mayor Eduardo Paes announced the creation of a special office of supplementary public transportation, led by state judicial police official Cláudio Ferraz, former commander of the anti-organized crime bureau that has pursued the militias of Rio.

The alternative van service racket is one of many money-making schemes of criminal paramilitary organizations, made up of policemen, jail guards, and soldiers, especially in the Western Zone.

Moto taxis serving areas where vans cannot reach are also very popular. 

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Delta has since voluntarily withdrawn from Maracanã and most other projects.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

Popular Indignation, Globo Claim Sambodian Youth Nabob!

“And here is a story that will leave you indignant.” Globo journalism is not Globo journalism unless it tells you first how to feel about the fact, if any, that come after.

The politicization of corruption accusations is a common and a wearisome spectacle in these Sambodian climes, and major news organizations tend not to slip the leash if ordered to avoid going into attack dog mode on a political ally of ownership .

In the meantime, the PSDB government of São Paulo has been accused, and not without a certain justice, of benefiting from cozy relationships with the corporate media to avoid corruption scandals in its ranks.

Celso Pitta died a free man, more or less. And probably so will Maluf.

And so it is surprising to read of a state secretary falling on his sword over corrupt practices not even related to the exercise of his office. Terra reports.

The state government of São Paulo state confirmed late Sunday that governor  Geraldo Alckmin (PSDB) had accepted the resignation of state sport, leisure and youth secretary Jorge Pagura. The neurosurgeon Pagura allegedly received payment for shifts not worked at the Regional Hospital of Sorocaba before becoming secretary, according to a report on Globo’s Fantástico today.

Fantástico — a weird amalgam of 60 Minutes and Laugh-In that runs in prime time Sunday night — is a traditional launching pad for smear campaigns and moral panics.

According to a press release, he left office voluntarily “with the objective of assisting in clarifying the facts brought forth by the state prosecutor and the [Sambodian GAO].”

According to the report, more than 70 health professionals were investigated bu police and prosecutors for suspected embezzlement of public funds. On Wednesday, 12 doctors, nurses, dentists and business managers were arrested and charged with involvement in a fraud scheme at 12 hospitals in Sorocaba, Itapevi and São Paulo. One suspect is still at large.

The state secretary was not among those investigated.

To make a long story short, however, a wiretap captured a telephone call in which arrangements are made for payment for a shift not worked.

Probity seems to have broken out on a nonpartisan basis. I know these nuances mean little to you, but I am stuck in this place and the local media sphere has permeated my brain.

Goiânia | Death Squad Supporters Picket Regional Daily

‘Cause the cop don’t need you and man, they expect the same

As Observatório da Imprensa observes of the regional press, there are still parts of Brazil where the the most organized crime going is the cops,who are ready and willing to kill your ass if you object to the status quo. I translate

On January 9 the daily O Popular, of Goiânia, kicked off a series of reports titled   “Where Are They?”, dealing with people who have disappeared in the Center-Western state after being pulledover by police. The journal found that that more persons have disappeared in the state since redemocratization than disappeared under the dictatorship: 29 disappearances between 2000 abd 2010 compared with 15 state residents disappared during the dicatorship. The paper ran a high-impact headline that day: “More disappeared under democracy than under dictators”. Later, O Popular ran another series about suspected death squad activity by police, revealing that  117 pessoas were killed by state military police between 2003 and 2005.

On February 14, the Federal Police began Operation Sixth Commandment (thou shalt not kill, in the Bible translation used by protestants) and arrested 19 PMs accused of murdering or “disappearing” at least 40 persons in Goiás. The feds got involved after one of the crimes attributed to the group took place in Torixoréu, in Mato Grosso, giving the feds the right to asseert jurisdiction.

I think this may be because the area is an indigenous zone, but I am not sure.

The PM Pistoleiros and the anti-Wikileaker

We took along our free copy, delivered to our door, of the Folha yesterday  – I thought that would have expired long ago, but the Institute of Circulation must be making its rounds — and I gisted the following stories for my wife — a regular practice of ours because it is true what they say

Driving makes you stupid.

In the first incident, 180 military police in Osasco — a 20-minute drive from here –raided a Hooverville there in search of a high-precision sniper’s rifle used by a death squad in a murder for hire scheme business run by ex-police.

The cases noted by the Folha all involved former military police murdering current military and state judicial police.

In a related story — only in Brazil — the 79-year-old founder of Gol Airlines is arrested on fresh charges of contracting for a murder for hire — he wanted to whack a witness against him in a case of murder for hire prior to this one, in which someone actual wound up dad. The paterfamilias has returned to the jungles of Tocantins where he wages war to keep the old ways alive.

The second story was, not so much the case itself, but a source of surprise that it caused such a hullabaloo.

A very well-known and prestigious sociologist put in charge of crime statistics for the state government opened a consultancy on the side and was profiting from the sale of this confidential public property to private parties. Call him the anti-Wikileaker.

He not only said he had permission to do so, but that the idea came from a supeior. But first, out on LRP duty in the Vietnamese bush of Sambodia.

Military police internal affairs mobilized 180 men Thursday morning in Osasco in a hunt for a .223 rifle used by a death squad to kill six cops in 2009 and 2010. Among the dead were four PMs and 2 state judicial police .

During the operation, two men were arrested on suspicion of membership in a criminal faction. Six weapsons were seized, along with grenades and drugs –but not the rifle sought. All the evidence collected is being taken to Deic, an anti-organized crime division.

It used to be that GAECO battled oganized crime.

The state prosecutor had applied for an arrest warrant on ex-PM Luiz Roberto Martins Gavião, suspected of heading the criminal grouip.

The warrant request came from GAECO Guarulhos, after a wiretap indicated he was the culprit in the murder of Douglas Noaldo Yamashita, io Santo André (ABC), in April 2010.

The group that police is headed by Gavião comprises some 10 former cops and charges from R$ 30,000 to R$ 50,000 per hit.

Gavião was also partners in a security businesss with Paulo Sérgio Óppido Fleury, fired from the state police in 2010 for administrative irregularities.

Yes, he is the son of that Sérgio Fleury, the sadistic thought police chief of DOI-DOPS..

Fleury, said prosecutor Marcelo Alexandre Oliveira, is suspected of booking jobs for the group of hired killers. Fleury denies any role and says he is being “persecuted.”

Accused by Gaeco as the group’s triggerman, the ex-PM Jairo Ramos dos Santos confessed to killing Yamashita some days after the crime,when he was arrested wearing a disguise and seeking hospital treatment. He had been wounded while firing on the civil police agent.

Data Privacy and Data Privatization

Kahn’s humiliating dismissal run against the grain of a state whose official motto could be, “For our friends, anthing; for our enemies, the Law.”

Rather than, non duco ducor.

Tongues will wag about internecine strife within the ruling Social Democrats.  Kahn is apparently now saying that former state security chief Saulo de Castro, now heading Transportation, advised him to set up a consultancy on the side and charge private customers for state-owned data.

Kahn was fired yesterday, after the Folha reported he was selling consulting services that made use of statstics on violence in the State.

The reliability of this information, so politically important and so statistically muddle, may not survive another scandal like this.

Kahn was hired for the post in 2003. Castro headed Public Security at the time, during the first mandate of Governor Alckmin (2003-06).

During which time the gutters ran with blood and all kinds of hinky shit got pulled.

Castro said he knew Kahn was a partner at Angra Consultoria e Representação Comercial.

Kanh confirmed that, on belalf of the  Freight Shippers Syndicate  o Sindicato das Empresas de Transporte de Cargas de SP he personally paid two CAP employees to research and study state figures.

These are private employees, paid by a private firm, with access to public property considered confidential. The syndicate says the contract is legal.

Castro said the partnership was formed because of the disparities between union and state figures on robbery and theft of loads.

He said that in his view the Syndicate is not a private interest but the spokesman for a group of companies..

I get hired to represent all privately owned lemonade stands in the neighborhood, but does not make me the agent of those stands.

Saulo is influential in the current Alckmin government, but has lost some juice in his traditional power center — public safety. He and safety secretary Ferreira Pinto are vying behind the scenes for influence over Alckmin.

The day before yesterday, Kahn had told this paper that creating was done at the request of the state government.

He said it was suggested as a way of supplementing his monthly government salary of R$ 5.000..

Fees of from $R20,000 to $30,000 were mentioned for these private reports.

It costs about as much to commit mayhem as to measure it, it seem.

So many scandals of this sort have been quashed in the past — not even the ex-mayor who set aside lots of municipal debt paper for himself and cronies was ever tried, much less convicted.

The Folha and Estadão seem to have undertaken a minor crusade since the scandal over the federal district governor.

Good for them. Both are at their best when standing up for the taxpayer.

I expect a mild epidemic of cases similar to those seen recently in Rio — where the state police chief resigned and was arrested for racketeering.

Everybody knows it but is simply afraid to say it.

Rio State Police Chief Steps Down, Will Be Indicted

Underground Rio van service vehicle, loaded with black-clad corpses wearing combat boots, attest to police-run organized crime schemes. See Rio de Janeiro: “Carobinha Death Toll Reaches 10″

There have long been indications of corruption at the highest levels of the Rio police. The case of Felix Tostes, a top aide to the state chief, was as a garish example.

Tostes  was executed mob-style while on the run from charges of running an enormous bribery scheme enabling the continued operation of gambling concerns. He had also been the head of the “militia” in Rio das Pedras, a Rio neighborhood — that is, a mafia-style protection and black marketeering cartel run by current and ex-cops and soldiers.

The murder my have been ordered by the so-called League of Justice, a parapolitical movement, in the Colombian sense of the term, known for a particularly deadly enforcer, a state cop known as Batman.

Now, this

The chief of Rio de Janeiro’s state judicial police has stepped down after the indictment of a top aid on charges of forewarning criminals of police actions.

The former chief will now himself be indicted for leaking police intelligence.

Having stepped down as police chief after a tense negotiation involving Governor Sérgio Cabral, a discussion that began late Monday, proceeded through the night and conclude in official announcments  yesterday, police chief Allan Turnowski is due to be indicted today by the Polícia Federal on suspicion of leaking information. He was allegedly overheard on wiretaps alerting police inspector Christiano Gaspar Fernandes about a federal police investigation. Turnowski had already been told by state security chiefJosé Mariano Beltrame, that he would have to undergo further question by Rio feds..

The conversation recorded by the feds took place last year, after the PF obtained an informant insist the anti-drug division, DCOD.  Delegacia. Allan allegedly told his subordinate to remain alert because the feds were plaining a raid. One of the targets of this investigation,, Christiano was eventually arrested. After time in Drae, the bom disposal squad, the officer had been assigned to the 22nd Precinct in Penha. Last Friday, when the feds commenced Operation Guillotine, that precinct was shutdown for two hours while search warrants were served. Gus, ammunition, cell phone and documents were sezied and are under study..

Source: Portal ClippingMP. | O Globo

Will the Military Police see their time come as well?

Sambodian City Hall | Malufists Pay It Backward

City Hall fought the law and the law won …

Another bit of good news gleaned from the Portal ClippingMP

55 former city aldermen, among them mayor Gilberto Kassab, will have to return R$ 5.3 million to the public coffers, reports the Estado de S. Paulo.

Three private citizens persisted for 16 years to bring about the result.

Mayor Kassab continues to remain in office — correct me if I am wrong on this — only because of a stay preventing him from being impeached for campaign finance irregularities. And yet no one else seems to find this insane.

I try not to avoid getting involved in local political debate, but Mr. Kassab remains a grotesque reminder of Malufism, the political movement of the late eighties and early nineties that spawned him.

Maluf is the extraordinarily corrupt ex-mayor and ex-governor who is subject to immediate arrest in New York City by order of the Distrcit Attorney there. Said Robert Morgenthau at the time, “We are not running some Grand Caymans on the Hudson here, after all.”

After 17 years, a court sentenced 55 ex-aldermen from the Sambodian City Hall  to return  R$ 5,3 million to the public coffers. The sum represents salary payments between 1993 and 1994 that exceeded the constitutional limit — city legislators by law can receive no more than  75% of teh salaries of state lawmakers. No futher appeal is possible.

Among those sentenced was mayor Gilberto Kassab (DEM), five currently serving aldermen, two commissioners of the Municipal  Tribunal of Audits and former aldermen Vicente Viscome and Hanna Garib, both accused of involvement in the Máfia of the Inspectors, a bribery scandal dating from 1998. Each defendant will have to repay R$ 95,000 on average, although the exact value can still be contested. They will also have to pay off R$ 533,000 in court costs.

There was a Mafia of the Inspector scandal just last year, in Brás. This is a permanent scheme in which city inspectors overlook lack of documentation in return for regular bribes from camelôs, or informal street vendors — who will sell you the latest movies cheaper than it would cost you to rent them.

I remember this latest outbreak of Mafia Scandalism because my immigration lawyer at the time was arrested as part of it. Gold chains, gold bracelets, expensive cologne in excess, the whole experience.

The civil suit dates from 1994. The plaintiffs, three residents of Lapa, in the Western Zone, questioned the forumula used by council members to calculate their own pay raises. Based on a wrongful interpretation of Resolution No. 05– the members of that council (1993-1996) were exempted from income tax.the state prosecutor nvestigated whether there were irregularities in the procedure leadingto the pay hike.

.

Caught | Rotten Rio Cops

Brasilianas.Org reports: arrest of high-level police officials for corruption

I told you this would happen: as state police move to secure territory in shantytowns where drugs and gambling rackets have enormous power to corrupt, they would do so under the watchful eye of federal police.

I translate, rapidly and carelessly.

RIO – More than 350 federal officers are on the streets of Rio this morning serving 45 arrest and 48 search warrants on state judicial and military cops accused of corruption, robbery and involvement with drug gangs.  PF investigations indicate that the police arrested were playing a double game, tipping drug gangs to police operations against them.

One of the criminals tipped off was allegedly Antonio Bonfim Lopes, known as Nem, who heads a drug gang in Rocinha and Vidigal. In September  2009, he was forewarned of a major federal operation to arrest him.Investigation indicate that a right-hand man to the chief of the state legislative police warned the criminal personally.

The size of the bribes indicates the seniority of the persons involved.

According to the feds, some of the crooked cops got up to R$ 100,000 in bribes per month to protect the drug gangs. Furthermore, the accused allegedly robbed the criminals they were protecting. The most recent crimes took place in Penha and the Alemão complex, when military and judicial police were caught red-handed looting cash and valuables from residents and drug grangs..

This morning’s operation is being coordinated by the State Secretary of Public Safety, the state unified internal affairs division (CGU) and state prosecutors.At least two judicial police stations have been searched, along with residences all over Rio.

At 7 a.m. or thereabouts, the feds issued a press release on Operation Guilllotine, saying the operation came about after an investigation into  leaks inside another operation being run out of a state police precinct in Macaé, called “Operation .22 Parabellum”,  whose objective was to arrest the drug dealer “Rupinol”, who had operated in Rocinha with Nem.

Rashomon Effect | Cossió in Paraguay

A Bolivian governor, an opposition leader in the Bolivian “half moon” state of Tarija, is impeached — correction: suspended pending prosecution —  by the department legislature on corruptions charges.

Mario Cossió was removed — correction: suspended pending prosecution — over allegations he embezzled funds destined for paving roads, and has since sought political asylum in Paraguay.

Los Tiempos of Bolivia reports today that Paraguayan president Fernando Lugo has endorsed the theory of a politically motivated prosecution during an interview with CNN en Español earlier this week.

One of my resolutions for 2011 is the follow the regional press more systematically. I have a good system now for making the most of my 6 a.m. Paranhos-Brayton News Hour on PBS — my personal broadcasting system.

Another is to stop blogging so damn much — making more use of telegraphic, multi-item news round-ups inspired by Wikileaked State Department cables and focusing more on business-related topics.

El Mundo of Bolivia noted the apparent contradiction between the two televised interviews.

A search of the CNN Web site it not confirm that such an interview took place, much less that Lugo made the statements attributed to him.

But then again, the CNN internal search engine sucks.

A YouTube user posted the video in question — above. Lugo is bald and bloated after treatments for a recently diagnosed cancer. Now, if I can fix my ALSA sound configuration, I could double-check the quote, if I had the time. Writes Los Tiempos,

President Fernando Lugo said that in many countries justice is subordinated to politics, for which reason the Cassió petition will be studied carefully and responsibility, and accepted if appropriate. He also said there are signs of political persecution in the case.

As far as I can tell, all he said was that the politicization of justice is a general problem in a number of unnamed countries (Alberto Gonzalez).

The former Tarija governor arrived in Assunción on 22 December and was issued a 90-day temporary residency visa while the government evaluates his request for asylum. In statements to ABC Color, Cossío accused Bolivian president Morales of conspiring to overthrow him and said he remains the legitimate governor of Tarija.

The Bolivian daily, cut and pasted into an archipelago of anti-Morales Web sites, appears to be the only news outlet claiming that Lugo believes Cossió to be the victim of a politically-motivated, or “Alberto Gonzalez,” prosecution.

Amaury Ribeiro and “The Limit of Our Irresponsibility”

BAC failed to assess adequately the risk that certain South American money service business customers were conducting illegal activity through a Manhattan office of the bank. Many Brazilian money service businesses conducted illegal transmittal operations through the account of a Uruguayan money remitter at the office of BAC’s subsidiary, Bank of America, N.A., at 110 West 33rd Street in Manhattan.

Now that the elections are over, the most eagerly awaited Brazilian literary event of the year will undoubtedly be the publication of a book by the former Estado de Minas reporter Amaury Ribeiro Jr.

Ribeiro is a respected, prize-winning investigative reporter once nearly assassinated by a drug mafia while researching a report on the phenomenon — and now, potentially, a criminal defendant. He is charged with hiring a shady character who submitted false documents to get his hands on the tax data of relatives of a major political candidate, and then paying hush money to the shady character. Or so says the shady character.

I reproduced some earlier coverage on the subject, but may have been hasty in taking at face value accusations that the reporter engaged in “checkbook journalism” in order to obtain the financial records of politically prominent figures.

In any event, Mr. Ribeiro is currently in legal difficulties that make Judy Miller’s contempt of court citation look like a littering ticket..

And yet, oddly enough, Ribeiro has not been elevated to the level of a martyr to press freedoms, as Judy was — grotesquely, in my view — before being quietly pushed into early retirement.

In any event, we should not prejudge the guy.

This is one of those brain-scrambling tales of dirty doings in high Brazilian places. Trying to follow all the shell corporations involved is like playing a game of four-dimensional three-card monte.

The story of the story has tended to be framed in terms of the national political contest, especially after the journalist reportedly testified to federal police that his research was motivated by a desire to counter opposition research designed to discredit Aécio Neves, a leading candidate for the PSDB presidential nomination.

The reporter was quoted as testifying that he became aware of an attempt by partisans of José Serra to subject Neves to a S.W.I.F.T. Boat treatment in order to abort his bid for the presidential nomination.

This alleged campaign on Serra’s behalf was allegedly run by former federal police agent and federal deputy Marcelo Itagiba of Rio de Janeiro — who failed in his bid for reelection in the recent elections.

If I ever write a political thriller, Itagiba is going to provide me with plenty of fodder. Meanwhile, rather transparent fictional references to the controversial lawmaker in the current sequel to the hit film Elite Troop — Tropa de Elite — has tongues wagging.

At any rate, this testimony by the reporter tended to contradict the thesis of an abortive scandal in which the “dossier” was attributed to the “campaign intelligence” team of the PT presidential candidate.

See

• Sambodian Checkbook Journalism: A Case

In fairness, I ought to add a «?» to that headline and translate the open letter from Amaury Ribeiro Jr. to Brazilian journalists for the record, in which he denies having received information by illegal means.

Also noteworthy has been the posting of an interview with the Swiss whistleblower who denounced bribes paid to São Paulo elected officials to a Wikileaks mirror site — an interview by Leonardo Attuch, be it said, who still figures pretty high on my personal list of “dubious integrity, journalists exhibiting.”

All this pre-publicat ion coverage of the book has been a publicist’s pipe-dream, needless to say.

Hell, even I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy.

On October 26, the journalist published an open letter to fellow journalists along with part of the documentation he turned over to the federal police in connection with investigations he conducted between 1998 and 2002 into the privatizations promoted by the government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso. The letter contains information on the  CPMI of Banestado, obtained, he says, “legally and without violating privacy laws.”He reiterated as well that his motives were purely journalistic and not partisan-political.

Amaury was indicted on October 25 on four charges relating to violation of the privacy of political allies and family members of  José Serra (PSDB). The federal police found in its report to the prosecutor that the journalist violated financial privacy, paid bribes, used forged documents and suborned a witness.

The text of the letter follows.

To my journalistic colleagues:

I am forwarding to all of you a copy of a small portion of the material I handed over today to the federal police. All of these papers were obtained legally, without violating privacy rights. Recall that these documents refer to the period 1998-2002.

The documents I handed over are not the result of any partisan activism, in which I have never engaged, but rather an expression of the only form of activism I have ever engaged in — the practice of journalism. As evidence of this, I remind you that it was I who authored the story in IstoÉ magazine No. 1863 (June 2005) titled “The Money Appears,” in which I exposed the PT slush fund scheme. My only desire is that the freedom of the press we enjoy in Brazil might serve to enlighten the population.

These are official reports to which I had access while working on a book about the privatizations. They are being released to the public now for the first time. They were obtained by legal means through the discovery process in my defense of a lawsuit against me and belong to the archives of the parliamentary commission of inquiry into the  Banestado case. Once sealed against public scrutiny, they are now out in the open. I hope they will shed light on a shadowy but highly significant chapter in our history.

I call your attention to two points in particular, both based on official documents of the Banestado CPI, obtained from information on the Beacon Hill account at JPMorganChase in New York and from the account of Beacon Hill Service Corporation (BHSC) at the MTB Bank, which managed a number of anonymous and clandestine subaccounts  In the United States,  BHSC was found guilty in  2004 of illegal transactions

Actually, it was condemned for failing to meet its “Know Your Customer” due diligence duties — a new set of stringent rules that emerged from the USA PATRIOT Act.

. In Brasil, inspired by the name Beacon Hill, the federal police mounted its own operation Farol da Colina, examining such figures as former governor Paulo Maluf and banker Daniel Dantas. The points I would emphasize are the following.