Globopar and the Virgins | Material Events

Source: Blog da Cidadania

Between 2001 and 2002,  Globo Comunicações e Participações Ltda. (Globopar) organized a financial scheme to acquire the transmission rights to the World Cup of 2002. The federal tax authority found the scheme to be fraudulent and criminal. The company was punished  with heavy fines and other penalties.

Globopar had acquired a company in the Virgin Islands that was dissolved just one year later. The funds traced to this company by the tax authority were used by the Marinho family holding company to pay for the transmission rights.

The tax authority brought charges against the company, finding that the transaction had resulted in the evasion of the Income Tax for Corporations [IRPJ] and demanding the payment of the principal, together with adjustment for inflation and a fine. In all, the company was presented with a bill for some R$ 600 million.

All of this took place at a time when news of Globo’s financial problems were widely reported in Brazil and around the world.

In October 2002,  Globopar, a shareholder and operator of the NET cable TV network — an asset it would later sell to the Mexican group Telmex — announced it would renegotiate the deadlines for settling the debt generated by its participation in NET.

At the time, market experts viewed the manuever as a sort of  [“blank  settlement”] by Globo.

«Brand Journalism» | A Tropical Perspective

Source: J. Walter Thompson

This quick note is a sign that my network of cultural references is shifting hemispheres.

«Brand journalism» is apparently a hot but not so smoking hot new topic from Faith Popcorn’s Dictionary of the Futurte, but I had to read it in the Observatório da Imprensa

Carlos Castilho explains the novel concept of «brand journalism».

It is more or less as though a Microsoft public relations man presented himself as “a reporter for Microsoft,” assuming the same professional identity as a reporter for the Folha de S. Paulo or the New York Times.

• Is it an ad or a news story? And does it matter which? 

Hypothesis: It matters to me. Am I alone on this one?

By: Carlos Castilho
Partial translation: C. Brayton

Another adjective is being pinned on journalism, this time with controversial connotations.

My favorite example of a Faith Popcorn-style semantic rebranding is «innovation journalism» — its autohagiographical Wikipedia entry defines it tautologically as «journalism about innovation.» Which is, of course, ridiculous.

Center and Periphery | Policies and Politics

I enjoy proving from time to time that I am capable of translating and subtitling film clips without complete ineptitude.

This week I thought I would take a crack at what promises to be a complex and eventful political season in São Paulo, as a youngish technocrat from the PT, Fernando Haddad, takes over City Hall from the widely despised Gilberto Kassab — a real estate broker and former city planning secretary whose term of office was marked by extreme inertia in dealing with such problems as public transportation, a flagship downtown renewal roject and a city building permit official who grew rich in the course of performing his public duties.

Source: Revitalizing Downtown São Paulo | YouTube | Excerpt from a local newscast posted by the user SPCentro on July 30, 2012.

On the same topic:

• «Nova Luz, Uma Ova Luz» | The Day in Sambodian Urban Planning

In the following, it is embarrassing to observe that the Nova Luz marketing campaign is still struggling to go viral, after so many false starts and nothing to show for the efforts except a few demolished vacant lots.

Grosso Modo | The Newsstand’s Last Stand

Pillboxes: The face of New York City’s brand new news kiosks

We pull into a rest stop along the Anchieta-Imigrantes before descending through the foggy Serra do Mar to the North Shore.

Along the way, we visit the newsstand to buy some magazines for beach reading.

Not only do we discover that our personal must-read CartaCapital is not for sale, but also that virtually every title available in this roadside newsstand is a publication of the Grupo Abril — the market leading publisher of Veja, Exame, Claudia, Superinterresante and many others.

The man behind the counter is nervous and cannot explain the fact.

In 2007, the distribution arm of Abril acquired Chinaglia, the last independent press distribution company in the state, and now enjoys a monopoly in this market. The newly formed corporation is known as Treelog S.A. Logística Distribuição.

Newsstands are an integral part of São Paulo’s urban ecology, and newsstand owners, like taxi drivers, are useful  pressure points if you want to take the pulse of the city. Some feature Abril on their marquees, others Editora Três or Globo, and still others reserve the display window for Carta Capital.  But newsstand owners are almost always reticent to discuss their relationships with their distributors.

The same is true in New York  — or used to be true until the Spanish company Cemusa bought up the majority of independent street kiosks. The process of obtaining a license to mount a kiosk still requires that no one individual own more than one stand. (Source: Vanishing New York)

My impression — possibly ingenuous — was always that market forces dictated how much of what these independents ordered from their wholesaler, depending on customer demand.

My old newsie at Wall and Water was sharp this way: he knew what you wanted better than you did. And naturally, he ordered the W$J by the bucketful, and so many The Nations.

Cemusa’s Brazilian subsidiary is active in bus stop and news kiosk advertising in  five Brazilian capitals, but not São Paulo, as far as I can see.

At any rate, Danielle Naves de Oliveira, writing for Observatório da Imprensa — 25 September 2012 — compares this situation to a print distribution industry standard in Germany, and I translate.

Here is a case that resembles our own situation.

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.

Brazilians To Take Back Amazon?

In tones once reserved for the fictional tabloid Hush! Hush! — in James Ellroy’s L.A. Confidential — Relatório Reservado reports troop movements by Brazilian private equity in the Amazon region.

Fonte muito próxima a Jorge Paulo Lemann crava suas fichas em uma investida da 3G Capital sobre o mega site Amazon. Lemann, não custa lembrar, tem um latifúndio no comércio eletrônico no Brasil (Americanas, Submarino, Shoptime e Ingresso.com)

A source very close to Jorge Paulo Lemann is betting all his chips on a raid by 3G Capital on the e-commerce giant Amazon. You might recall that Lemann already controls a sizable fiefdom in Brazilian e-commerce with assets such as Americanas, Submarino, Shoptime and Ingresso.com.

3G recently bid successfully on Burger King, launching its tender offer just last week. Brazilian meatpacker JBS last year completed a string of acqusitions abroad, including the iconic Swift and Co.

The Age of the Brazilian Multinacional is dawning, they say.

Whether the fledgling e-commerce sector here has the same clout as Big Beef remains to be seen, I suppose. Submarino, the best known operation in the Amazon mold, is more of a Tietê River alongside the muddy, rolling Amazon.

Lemann is a former partner in the Banco Garantia, the investment bank that acquired the fuure Brazilian beverage giant AmBev and successfully merged it with Interbrew to form the multinational InBev.

Lemann actually has no formal association with the New York-based 3G Capital, whose senior partners are the Brazilians Alex Behring — former CEO of the railroad holding America Latina Logistica and former partner in GP Investimentos — and Luis Moura, an alumnus of Citi, Banco Pactual. and the hedge fund JGS S.A.

Wikipedia — one of those profiles of the sort generally written by the profilee

Jorge Paulo Lemman is also a board member of Lojas Americanas S.A., the Gillette Company and Swiss Re; Chairman of the Latin American Advisory Committee of the New York Stock Exchange; founder and board member of Fundação Estudar, which provides scholarships for Brazilian students; and a member of the International Advisory Boards of the Credit Suisse Group and DaimlerChrysler.

“If You Vote Quimby You Will Lose Your Job”: Wal-Mart Brings Banana Republicanism Back Home

Bringing the maquiadora model to the other side of the Rio Grande

FUD: (1) fear, uncertainty and doubt; (2) faulty use of detail; (3) a brand name for hot dogs, sausages, and cold cuts produced by the Mexican company Sigma Alimentos, which itself is part of the ALFA industrial conglomerate.

Wal-Mart teme que vitória democrata favoreça sindicatos nos EUA, diz jornal (G1/Globo, EFE): A story widely picked up in Brazil this weekend — alongside the ongoing conversion of the U.S. dollar into the West Texas peso — is that Wal-Mart reportedly admits warning its employees that voting for Barack Obama could cost them their jobs.

The tactic is remarkably similar to that used by the company in Mexico, where the big box retail latifundio campaigned openly in its stores for a specific candidate in 2006, in violation of Mexican law.

It got big favors in return, too, including a retail banking license that not even the crony capitalists of Bush II could push through. See

• “Fiery Leftist” Watch
• Wal-Mart: Astroturf Wholesaler, Borked on Banking, Bows to “Manufactured Outrage”
• Mexican Banking After Wal-Mart: ABM Man Calls Default Risk, Gouging “The Cost of Financial Democracy”
• Mexico Adelante: More on Wal-Mart’s Banana-Republican Bank
• Wal-Mart War On Shareholders: Bloomie’s Homies Storm the SEC

“If you vote Quimby, you could lose your job” is also strikingly similar to FUD tactics used by the U.S. State Department — and Susan “Mrs. International Republican Institute” Schwab, the savior of the Doha Round, in particular — in Venezuela and Costa Rica. See, for example,

• Costa Rica: Schwab Rewrites History
• “Four Flavors of Fear”: Excerpts from the Casas Memo
• Costa Rica: “FUD Mud Slung at Schwab Job”
• “Venezuela 2007 is Chile 1988″
• “Venezuela 2007 is Chile 1973″
• Fracas in Caracas: Messing With the Press?

You see the tactic in use in Brazil as well:

• Brazil: “Vote Quimby or You Will Lose Your Job”

File under “the banana-republicanization of American political life,” and see also

• Meet Señor Aguirre: Rob Allyn the Guatemalan
• Dicking Democracy, Down South American Way