Tupi SEC: New Superintendent of Information Asymmetries

São Paulo elevator news screens (Linux-powered, by the way) are started to pop up in the fancier buildings. “Telefônica denies conversations the Holland’s KPN over a proposed sale” (Friday, October 28). Features a red light-green light (but not yellow-light) heads-up display of traffic conditions on the major roadways that kind of reminds you of the Homeland Security “terror alert level” display (still yellow after these years).

The Comissão de Valores Mobiliários (CVM), Brazil’s securities regulator, announces:

A Comissão de Valores Mobiliários (CVM) informa que a Superintendência de Relações com Investidores Institucionais (SIN) será reestruturada com o objetivo de centralizar em uma única área técnica as atividades relacionadas aos fundos de investimento e seus prestadores de serviços. A partir de 1º de março, Carlos Alberto Rebello Sobrinho assume a SIN, após dez anos à frente da Superintendência de Registro de Valores Mobiliários (SRE).

… that Superintendency of Institutional Investor Relations (SIN) will be restructured with the objective of centralizing activities related to investment funds and their service providers in one technical department. Starting March 1, Carlos Alberto Rebello Sobrinho will take over SIN after ten years as superintendent of the securities registry (SRE).

“Churnalism”

Turtles all the way down: Malcolm McLaren ransom-note aesthetic enjoys revival in Blighty book design circles. Would somebody please smuggle this book to South America for me on the next packet steamer to Santos?

British journalism | Hacks at work | Economist.com: In the course of trying to document for a Metropolitan colleague the informal Colonial terms of art “hack” (journalist) and “flack” (public relations professional), conversation turns to whether the Economist is any good anymore (I hold my hand, palm down, parallel to the floor, and make the wiggling motion denoting ambivalence).

Which leads to this bit of doggerel:

You cannot hope to bribe or twist,
Thank God, the British journalist.
But seeing what the man will do
Unbribed, there’s no occasion to!

It’s a review of a book by Nick Davies of the U.K. Guardian called Flat Earth News.

The Economist manages not to mention the title of the book even once in its review.

The Economist apparently thinks the Five Ws are optional. The name of the book is not as important as what the Economist thinks of the book.

The title does appear in an associated “opportunity to buy” “related items” box on the Web page.

Technical Note: Quote Bloat in Potential Tupi Tie-Up !

“Investors in the Pernambuco Stock Exchange”: I visited the exchange in historic downtown Recife once (the building was colonial and pink) but am so freaking fat in the photo that I hesitate to publish it. Whether Brazilian regional exchanges might someday awake from their provincial torpor is kind of an interesting topic to speculate about, though.

When translating quotes from one language into another, we should do so in an idiomatic way rather than with pedantic literalness. Care must be taken to ensure that the tone of the translation is equivalent to the tone of the original. Beware of translating quotes in newspaper pickups back into the original language of the source. If a French politician gives an interview to an American newspaper, it is almost certain that the translation back into French will be wrong and in some cases the quote could be very different. In such cases, the fewer quotes and the more reported speech, the better. —A Handbook for Reuters Journalism, “Quotes”

Notice to the Market: The Bovespa, Brazil’s main stock exchange, launched an IPO not so long ago, and there has been newsflow in recent weeks according to which it is thinking of merging with the BM&F (“the Chicago Mercantile Exchange of Brazil,” sort of).

Which is certainly not a completely weird thought to have.

After all, at a certain point, the possibilities of a NYSE-CME combination were kicked around, weren’t they?

The Folha de S. Paulo reported such a merger would potentially produce “the second-largest exchange group in the world.”

Then had to run an erratum correcting “in the world” to “in South America” or “in Latin America,” I forget which now.

The CVM, Brazil’s securities regulator, is notably interested in trying to get a handle on rumor mills, disinformation campaigns, and the general employment of noise machinery to clog the gears of the free and efficient operation of the capital markets with baffling bullshit.

See also

• Brazil: “Tupi SEC Targets Journalistic Pump and Dump”

The CVM questioned the exchange about remarks to the press on the matter, and the exchange replied on January 18.

I mostly reproduce it as an exercise in evaluating the quality of newsflow in translation, which is kind of my thing these days (I am doing some modest consulting on this topic these days for the New York office of an investor relations agency that specializes in Tupi public companies.)

Just to make it clear: I do not have any information at all on the substance of the matter in question, and I most certainly would not be telling tales out of school about it even if I did.

Verdict: Not too bad.

We acknowledge receipt and thank you for your referenced [?] letter. In answer to your query [inquiry], we inform you that the headline of the news report published in the January 16, 2008 edition of newspaper Valor Econômico, issue of January 16, 2008, which was worded [read] “Fusão Bovespa-BM&F faz sentido, diz Gilberto Mifano” (“Merger Bovespa_-BM&F merger makes sense, says Gilberto Mifano”), is not an accurate quote quotation of anything the undersigned Gilberto Mifano told the newspaper reporter when he was interviewed [in his capacity?] as chief executive officer of Bovespa Holding S.A.

“Not with a decline, but with a miscalculation”: Apocalypse Dow, Reloaded

Post-hack ergo propter hack?

NewsOK clips the follow-up from AP’s Daniel Sorid to last year’s trading-system glitch at NYSE.

It is encouraging to see someone pursuing a mysterious major malfunction at a strategic tech Big Dig with this degree of doggedness.

Those who fail to learn from major systems malfunctions are doomed to repeat the last voyage of the Hindenburg.

See also

• Deluge! Panic! Chaos! Systems Crash! And Your Blogger Is on the Scene!
• Market Machine Post-Mortem: New Factoids on The Chinese Butterfly Hiccup
• Market Machine Madness: The Aftermath
• “Swiftness of Dow drop due to computers”
• Disorder Management and the Downfall of the Dow: Which Glitch is Which?

The item is from the (non)patented NMM Google News Alert on one of the more interesting words in the English language: glitch.

NEW YORK — With the stock market plunging, and the Dow Jones industrials already down hundreds of points, Wall Street’s most closely watched gauge dropped precipitously, in the process choking off electronic trading systems at the New York Stock Exchange.

Rio: Fudgeships In The Awarding of Judgeships?

Vintage roleta with bichos. Source: Musem of the Policia Civil, Rio de Janeiro

The suspicion is that the content of the exam was leaked to benefit sons, daughters-in-law, sons-in-law and nephews of senior judges of the state court. Among those approved for judgeships by the examination process, seven are related to senior Rio judges.

Lilian Matsuura of Consultor Jurídico (Brazil) reports:

Houve fraude no 41º concurso para ingresso na magistratura feito pelo Tribunal de Justiça do Rio de Janeiro em 2006. Esta é a conclusão do relator do processo sobre o caso no Conselho Nacional de Justiça, promotor Felipe Locke Cavalcanti. O julgamento, contudo, não terminou porque o conselheiro Técio Lins e Silva pediu vista dos autos.

There was fraud in the 41st competitive entrance examination for the judiciary conducted by the state supreme court of Rio de Janeiro in 2006. That was the conclusion of the investigating magistrate for the National Justice Council (CNJ), prosecutor Felipe Locke Cavalcanti. The case has not concluded yet, however, because CNJ councillor Técio Lins e Silva has requested time to review the case file.

Ao ler seu voto de 51 páginas na sessão nesta terça-feira (26/2), o relator afirmou que houve quebra de sigilo do conteúdo da prova, além de diversas outras irregularidades. Com isso, os 24 juízes aprovados, e que estão trabalhando, correm o risco de ter de deixar os gabinetes. Apesar de constar que o processo não foi lícito, Locke não chegou a uma conclusão em relação ao que deve ser feito. Não conseguiu decidir se todos os aprovados devem perder o cargo ou apenas aqueles que se beneficiaram com a fraude.

Reading out his 51-pp. opinion in the Tuesday session of the CNJ, the investigating magistrate said [the contents of the test leaked out], along with other irregularities. With this, the 24 judges approved, who are already at work, run the risk of having to vacate their offices. Although he found that the process was not valid, Locke did not state a conclusion about what ought to be done about it. He could not manage to decide whether all those approved for judgeships should lose their posts or only those who benefited from the fraud.

The CNJ is an independent oversight body for the Brazilian judiciary, established in recent years.

The irritable Maierovitch, a former federal judge and national “drug czar” turned columnist, has questioned in the past whether the oversight is really all that effective. See

• Brazilian Spies and Mafias Columnist: Judicial Self-Regulation is a Freaking Joke

The judiciary has suffered a scandal or two in the last year or so, including two cases from the Rio-São Paulo corridor involving senior judges accused of selling verdicts favoring organized crime interests such as illegal gambling enterprises.

“Legal certainty” seems to have emerged as a major theme at the multilateral donor and credit agencies.

More on that in a minute. The following does tend to leave with the negative impression that some of the judges who might be adjudicating your contract dispute (7 of the  24 candidates approved are related to court members) might be disposed to lie, cheat, steal and otherwise engage in personal conduct not conducive to upholding the fabled majesty of the law in the eyes of its postulants.

As suspeitas eram de quebra de sigilo e fraude para beneficiar filhos, noras, genros e sobrinhos de desembargadores do TJ fluminense. Entre os aprovados no processo, sete têm parentesco com desembargadores.

The suspicion is that the content of the exam was leaked to benefit sons, daughters-in-law, sons-in-law and nephews of senior judges of the state court. Among those approved for judgeships by the examination process, seven are related to senior Rio judges.

Ouch.

So NIRI and Yet So Far

“Sarbanes-Oxley inside!”

This comes to the e-mail inbox from the National Investor Relations Institute (which could really, really use a good copyeditor for its newsletter, by the way).

Too bad we are not in New York. This could be interesting. Seriously. It’s $50, but I bet I could gobble up at least that much in cocktail shrimp and gin.

While investors and analysts continue to rely on traditional print and broadcast media they are also becoming more “new media savvy,” presenting new challenges for the IR professional.

How will the ongoing and inexorable agglomeration of the Reuters-Thomson-NEWS-Dow infotainment complex affect your company’s never-ending battle against the gabbling ratfink and the churning of the rumor mills?

Result: While IROs need to continue to cater to the needs of the traditional media they must also understand how the recent acquisitions and mergers – such as News Corporation’s acquisition of Dow Jones & Co. (including The Wall Street Journal), and Thomson Corporation’s acquisition of Reuters Group PLC – will affect the journalists who cover their industry. IRO’s also need to closely follow Web-based reporting and blogs.

But only the blogs that people whose opinions matter are actually foolish enough to be reading instead of getting serious work done.

São Paulo Diary: Globo Takes a Gamble on Spiderman

The Terraço: slightly decrepit yet strangely graceful landmark across from the desert that the Praça da República has become.

As it happens, Robert had contacted the Globo network’s Fantástico and invited it to televise the stunt live — and according to him, the TV equipment is what tipped the security guard off.

He said his sponsors pay him the value of a luxury car for every climb, but asked that the exact amount not be published. His São Paulo adventure was bankrolled by the online casino Golden Palace.

Golden Palace, the online casino that grew their fame by utilizing odd advertising schemes, pleaded guilty yesterday to charges of illegal online gambling in Quebec, Canada. —Casino Gambling Web, November 30, 2007

Maguila, o segurança, frustra a ”vingança” do Homem-Aranha: “Magilla [the Gorilla] the security guard thwarts ‘revenge’ of Spiderman.”

I read it in the print edition of the Estado de S. Paulo on the CPTM commuter train on my way back from Lapa — transferring at Barra Funda — where I have gone to see the feds about my visa and application for permanent alienhood.

As Chico Buarque says,

Eu fui pra Lapa mais perdi a viagem …

But that is another story.

In this case, a Frenchman known for accepting corporate sponsorship to scale tall buildings is prevented from scaling the Terraço Italiano — its rooftop restaurant is a lovely spot — after tipping a team from the Globo TV network he would be trying it.

The Globo team hems and haws and argues that it was merely there to provide (exclusive) “serious” journalistic coverage of [an event of compelling public interest] [a garden-variety (“Drink Slurm!”) paid publicity stunt] [a publicity stunt paid for by a criminal organization.]

Magilla the security guard pantses the man from France as he makes the attempt.

Maguila nem precisou de superpoderes para vencer o Homem-Aranha anteontem à noite, no Terraço Itália, centro de São Paulo. Tudo bem, ele rasgou o terno. Mas bastou esticar os braços, alcançar o tornozelo do “herói” e puxá-lo até arrancar-lhe as calças. Foi assim, de forma nada heróica, que o francês Alain Robert, de 45 anos – conhecido como “Homem-Aranha” por escalar os mais famosos prédios do mundo -, foi parar no 3º Distrito. Alerta, Adilson Marques da Silva, de 34, o Maguila, impediu que Robert descesse, pelo lado de fora, sem equipamento de segurança, 41 andares do Itália, um dos edifícios mais altos da capital.

Magilla did not even need superpowers to defeat Spiderman the other evening at the Terraço Italia in downtown São Paulo. It is true that he tore his suit in the attempt. But all he needed to do was stretch out his arms, grab the ankle of the “superhero” and pull until he pulled the man’s pants off. It was in this less than heroic fashion that the Frenchman Alain Robert, 45, known as “Spiderman” because of his habit of climbing the world’s most famous buildings, wound up in the 3rd District stationhouse. The alert Adilson “Magilla” Marques da Silva, 34, prevented Robert from descending, from the outside, without safety equipment, the 41 floors of the building, one of the tallest in the city.

Brokerage and Jokerage on the Overnight Flight to Miami

Mug shot of Charles Ponzi, 1920.

Brasil e EUA deflagram operação para combater fraudes no mercado financeiro: The Brazilian feds and the FBI cooperate to bust Brazilian “ghost firms” set up to swindle little old ladies from Pasadena. The Agência Brasil has the story.

Agentes da Polícia Federal (PF) foram mobilizados hoje (25) para desmontar a ação de uma quadrilha que teria obtido a soma de US$ 50 milhões em crimes financeiros contra investidores estrangeiros. Os fraudadores lesaram pessoas físicas e jurídicas de diversos países, principalmente da Inglaterra, Espanha, Austrália, Estados Unidos e alguns países da Ásia, conforme nota distribuída à imprensa pela Polícia Federal.

The Brazilian federal police were mobilized today (February 25) against a criminal organization that had committed an estimated US$50 million in financial crimes against foreign investors. The fraudsters victimized both individual and institutional investors from English, Spain, Australia, the United States, and various Asian nations, according to a press release from [the Tupi feds] today.

A operação, denominada Pirita, foi montada em conjunto com FBI (sigla em inglês para Departamento Federal de Investigação), que cumpriu dois mandados de prisão contra brasileiros, em Miami. No Brasil, a ação ocorre em nos estados de São Paulo e Rio Grande do Sul, onde deverão ser cumpridos 27 mandados de prisão temporária, três mandados de prisão preventiva e 35 ordens de busca e apreensão.

The operation, nicknamed “Pyrite,” was conducted jointly with the FBI, which served two arrest warrants on Brazilian citizens in Miami. In Brazil, the operation is being conducted in São Paulo and Rio Grande do Sul, where 27 temporary arrest warrants, 3 preventive detention warrants, and 35 search warrants are being served.

“Veja Redefines the Boundaries Between Fact and Fiction” (and Attributes the Harry Potter Series to J.K. Howlling)

Os mais vendidos: Brazlian business journalist Luis Nassif continues his critique of the Editora Abril’s Veja magazine.

Nassif believes the magazine’s credibility has been crippled by a year-round carnival of undisclosed conflicts of interest. He reports that the publishing group — which controls 100% of the print distribution in São Paulo now — has SLAPPed him silly with lawsuits over the series.

The latest chapter puns with the phrase “best-sellers” and the notion of “biggest sell-outs.”

Ao longo dos últimos anos, duas vertentes determinaram o aprofundamento da deformação editorial da revista Veja. No comando, Eurípedes Alcântara e suas coberturas estranhas; nas entranhas, Mário Sabino, incumbindo de coordenar a brigada dos “assassinos de reputação”.

Over the years, two factors have played a decisive role in deepening the editorial distortions at Veja: (1) steering the ship, Euripedes Alcântara and his bizarre coverage; and (2) down in the engine room, Mário Sabino, in charge of coordinating the magazine’s “character assassination” brigade.

Eurípedes é o homem dos altos contatos, altamente agressivo, porém sabendo disfarçar. Seus braços na revista são Lauro Jardim e Diogo Mainardi.

Alcântara is the man with the high-level contacts, highly aggressive but able to disguise the fact. His [muscle] inside the magazine are Lauro Jardim and Diogo Mainardi.

Já Sabino é o truculento, uma espécie de cão de guarda feroz, sem escrúpulos nos ataques a terceiros, praticando cotidianamente o ritual da maldade, com uma agressividade quase pornográfica que se propaga por seus três alter egos: Sérgio Martins, Jerônimo Teixeira e Reinaldo Azevedo.

Sabino is a truculent fellow, a kind of junkyard dog who has no scruples about attacking others, celebrating the [black mass] of malice on a daily basis, an almost pornographically aggressive figure who propagates his agression through his three alter egos: Sérgio Martins, Jerônimo Teixeira and Reinaldo Azevedo.

On Azevedo, who is given to bouts of bizarre, hysterical shrieking cribbed from Gnostic religious pamphleteering, see also

• Rio de Janeiro: Colonel Paúl on Veja and the “Counter-Coup”

Guarde por ora essas informações e nomes, enquanto tentamos entender melhor o desastre que foi o fenômeno Sabino para a Veja.

Bear this in mind while we try to understand better the disaster that the Sabino phenomenon has represented for Veja.

O caráter jornalístico

What makes journalism journalism?

Há duas características do jornalismo que ajudam a legitimá-lo. Primeiro, investir contra qualquer ameaça de super-poder. Quando quer fuzilar algum personagem público, um dos expedientes mais utilizados pela mídia é superestimar o poder do alvo. Nas sociedades democráticas, a criação do super-poder (ou do mito) é suficiente para mobilizar a opinião pública contra ele.

Journalism has two qualities that help to legitimate it. First, that it takes a stand against any threat of excessive power. When they want to put some public figure in front of a firing squad, one of the gambits most frequently used by the media is to exaggerate the power commanded by their target. In democratic societies, the creation of an excessively powerful figure (or the myth of excessive power) is enough to mobilize public opinion against him.

See also

• Zé Dirceu, Evil Genius

Rio: “With Batman in the Can, It Hits the Fan”

Recovering two sets of charred remains from the Avenida Brasil after Sunday attack on Palmeirinha, northern zone of Rio. A state police raid the previous Thursday targeted militias in the area. Source: Terra (Brazil), photo by O Dia (Rio de Janeiro).

Rio: grupo invade favela na zona norte e mata 4: The Terra news portal (Brazil) reports that a large, unidentified armed group invades a shantytown in the northern zone of Rio and four die.

Pelo menos quatro pessoas morreram no início da manhã deste domingo quando 30 homens armados invadiram a favela Vila Palmeirinha, em Guadalupe, na zona norte do Rio. Segundo a polícia, desde 2006 milicianos controlam a região. As informações dos policiais indicam que bandidos estariam tentando retomar a favela após a prisão dos milicianos.

At least four persons died early Sunday morning when 30 armed men invaded the Vila Palmeirinha shantytown in Guadalupe in the northern zone of Rio. According to police, a militia has controlled the area since 2006. Police intelligence indicates that “bandits” may be trying to retake control after the arrest of the militiamen.

The Estado de S. Paulo reports 20 invaders.

I do not remember reading that militiamen were arrested in that part of town. But then I have been busy lately.

But read on: There was reportedly a raid on Thursday, as part of the follow-up to the so-called “Justice League” case.

The city councilman and state assembly representative for the area used the “Batman” symbol in their campaigns last year. The “Batman” symbol is also displayed on area homes and businesses to indicate that residents have paid their protection money.

See also:

• Rio’s Justice League: City Councilman Arrested on Death-Squad Charge

Wilson Gets Away: Bad Night at the Bingo

Jumping-off point for the bus to Santos: Jabaquara, Southern Zone.

The Military Police reported that all squad cars were called in to assist in the search for Oliveira, and therefore no car went to the warehouse where the illegal [gambling joint] was operating. When the PM did arrive there, the doors were closed and the warehouse was empty.

GCMs assaltam bingo em São Caetano: Municipal guards try to rob an underground “bingo” in São Caetano do Sul, overpowering a military policeman moonlighting as security for the illegal gambling joint in a blue-collar São Paulo suburb.

The blue-collar São Paulo suburb, in a way.
The Agência Estado news agency reports, and the Jornal da Tarde (Estado group) runs it under the disapproving “eyebrow,” or rubric, of polícia bandida (“the cops are criminals.”)

Dois guardas civis municipais de São Caetano do Sul foram presos na madrugada de ontem, depois de tentar assaltar um bingo clandestino no centro da cidade. Para entrar no galpão, eles renderam um policial militar, que estaria fazendo “bico” de segurança no local. Do lado de dentro, um agente penitenciário, que também seria funcionário do bingo, chamou a polícia.

Two municipal guards from São Caetano do Sul were arrested late last night after trying to rob an underground “bingo” in the downtown area of the city. To get into the warehouse, they overpowered a military policeman who was reportedly “moonlighting” as a security guard there. A prison guard, also reportedly an employee of the “bingo,” called the police from inside the establishment.

A ação ocorreu por volta das 2h30 de. Os guardas Harlen Santos Mendes, 35 anos, e Gerson Ferreira, 36, chegaram armados, usando coletes à prova de balas da GCM e da Polícia Civil. Um homem chamado Wilson também teria participado do roubo, mas conseguiu fugir.

The incident took place around 2:30 a.m. Municipal guards Harlen Santos Mendes, 35, and Gerson Ferreira, 36, were armed and wearing bulletproof vests with markings of the municipal guard and the state judicial police. A man named Wilson was also reported in on the robbery but managed to escape.

The Sunday Unfunnies: Torture on the (Rede) Record

Globo dissidents in Record’s stable of name-brand journalists include Vianna (top) and Amorim, who made a name for himself investigating how Globo either (1) actively helped to perpetrate a failed election-fraud attempt against Brizola in Rio or else (2) is the most inept news organization on the face of the earth (its own preferred explanation for the curious case of the funny numbers fed to the public from a (Unisys?) computer hacked by some colonels to cause someone else to be elected).

I miss getting up on Sunday morning and half-watching the Sunday talk shows back in New York, with a weird and inexplicable preference for George Stephanopolous on ABC and the McLaughlin Group on NBC.

My wife really, really hates this habit.

As part of its rivalry with Globo, the Rede Record here in Brazil has apparently started imitiating the format.

This morning, for example, we woke up at 8 a.m. to former Globo reporter Rodrigo Vianna, interviewing, among others, the organizer of the Seminário Internacional sobre Tortura (International seminar on torture) to be held at the nearby University of São Paulo starting tomorrow.

On Rodrigo Vianna, see also

• Explosive Story: “Globo Dissident Scoops the Network That Ratfinked Him”
• Vianna Back Bashing Globo
• Rede Globo Ratfinks Dissident Journos
• Latgé Responds to Vianna
• “Dear John”: Rodrigo Mouths Off to Marinho Media Mafia

Notable in this long segment, which included a survivor of the OBAN torture program of the 1970s, was the use of quite a lot of footage from a recent 60 Minutes (CBS) segment on the Abu Ghraib case.

Also notable: Prominent mention of the fact that the Folha da Tarde, of the Folha de S. Paulo media group, reported the death in a (fictitious) shootout with the forces of righteousness of the victim’s father, who was tortured alongside him, while the man was still alive.

An editor who allowed this fact to be mentioned, in passing, in a review of a book the Folha published on its late founder, was fired from a prominent (and very competent, sort of AdWeek-like) industry publication for doing so. See

• Brazil: Editor Fired Over Frías Anti-Hagiography

The landmark civil trial of Col. Brilhante Ustra also gets discussed at length. See also

• Revanchishmo

From the seminar announcement (I will be too busy to attend, unfortunately):

O Seminário Internacional sobre a Tortura, que ocorrerá nos dias 25, 26 e 27 de Fevereiro de 2008, tem por objetivo promover uma ampla discussão sobre a tortura e seus mitos. Dois fatores simultâneos motivam a realização deste seminário: 1) o retorno da discussão sobre a “eficácia” da tortura, ainda que em determinadas condições como, por exemplo, a “guerra contra o terror”, onde diante de um perigo iminente a tortura seria justificada para extrair informações que poderiam evitar danos maiores (argumento da “ticking bomb”); 2) a sobrevivência da tortura, mesmo vinte anos após o retorno à democracia, no interior das instituições brasileiras que deveriam garantir o cumprimento da lei.

The objective of the International Seminar on Torture, which takes place on February 25, 26 and 27 of this year, is promote wide-ranging debate on torture and its myths. Two factors motivated the organization of this seminar: (1) the return of debate over the “efficiacy” of torture, albeit under specific conditions such as the Global War on Terror, where, faced with imminent danger, torture might be justified to extract information needed to avoid greater evils (the “ticking bomb” argument); (2) the persistence of torture, even twenty years after redemocratization, inside Brazilian institutions that ought to guarantee that the law is upheld.

Dantas’ Inferno Is Stranger Than Fiction: Dona Janaína Protects Her Sources

Paraguayan photoshop job from the Ex-Petista blog, cited by Olavo Carvalho as a reliable source in a Zero Hora column: “Police find fingerprints of PT members on the money!” See Brazil: “We Must Clamp Down on the Nazi Internet!”

One English freelancer gets severely criticized in the Punch article for having conducted a study for Cedel and then presenting the results as a piece of journalism in Euromoney. In reporting the story, he gathered quotes frrom employees and directors who were critical of Cedel management, which were then sent to CEO André Lussi without appearing in print. The journalist in question, David Cowan, who had received hundreds of thousands of francs for this “report,” is now Clearstream’s director of corporate communications.

Arrastão is the blog of former Folha de São Paulo journalist (why “former,” I wonder?) turned “consultant” Janaína Leite.

In the most recent chapter of his series on peculiar local notions of best practices for business journalists — sell your poison pen to one side in a given business dispute — Brazilian business journalist Luis Nassif notes that in a blog post Ms. Leite defends a particular theory of the Telecom Italia industrial espionage case, currently under investigation by the Milan prosecutor, but cites no sources of the alleged information she presents weirdly, refers to what is apparently the Mainardian Milan Document without identifying it, or the source.

Nassif had written that a similar column, published at the same time, from Veja magazine’s Diogo Mainardi presented “a perfect example of the manipulation of news to suit the purposes of [parties to] business disputes.” See

• Ecce Veja, Dantas’ Inferno and Nassif’s Disbelief: Preliminary Notes on Dona Janaína and the Hackeraggio Ragazzi

I wanted to translate the post Nassif was referring to, along with Ms. Leite’s reply and the announcement that her column will be moving from Blogspot to Apostos.com.

Whois Apostos.com? Registered to:

Butter Consultoria
David Butter Nunes (altovoltablog@yahoo.com.br)
+55.2125493524
Fax: none
Marechal Mascarenhas de Morais St. 190, 303
Rio de Janeiro, RJ 22030-040
BR

Corner of Conrado Niemeyer in Copacabana.

And with whom does Mr. Butter consult? The main page at that URL looks like some sort of blog hosting site, with no information identifying it as the project of any consulting firm, not that I can see.

Which kind of tends to fit the general profile of an”astroturf” project: public relations campaigns using the Internet to spread rumors or “buzz” without the authorship of those rumors being traced back to the person who paid to have them spread. See also

• “Stealth Marketing and Editorial Integrity”

Edelman Worldwide earned worldwide derision, for example, when a blog billed as a spontaneous outpouring of love and affection for its client, Wal-Mart, turned out to have been authored by undisclosed paid shills.

Shill:

Etymology: probably short for shillaber : one who acts as a decoy or steerer: as a : one who is employed by an amusement enterprise (as a circus or carnival) to get the sale of tickets started after the barker has finished his spiel b : one who is employed by a pitchman to pose as a member of the audience and make the first purchase c : one who is employed by a gambling house to pose as a customer and keep action going d : one who poses as an innocent bystander to help a confidence man win over a prospective victim

Mr. Butter Nunes googles up as a journalism student at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in 1990. Someone by that name also googles up as entering an Economics program at the Universidade Federal Fluminense in 1997. Apostos means “bets” in New (and Old) World Lusophone. Expect to see that domain reregistered to block whois queries shortly. Competent shills tend to think of this beforehand.

Ms. Leite, in her post titled “g00dboys,” does, as Mr. Nassif notes, seem to cite information also cited in the “confidential report of the Milan prosecutor” posted by the Veja columnist (without providing information on its provenance). And he is right: She does so with properly citing the source of any of the factoids she publishes.

Há alguns dias, o ombudsman da Folha reclamou da cobertura relativa ao processo judicial enfrentado pela Telecom Italia em seu país de origem. Pois bem. Aí vai uma dica que pode render boa matéria: a Procuradoria de Milão, que cuida do assunto, descobriu que a Telecom Italia escondeu contas suíças de altos dirigentes da empresa. As contas tinham sido encontradas pela Kroll.

A few days ago, the ombudsman of the Folha de S. Paulo complained of the coverage of the legal proceedings Telecom Italia faces in its country of origin. So okay. Here is a tip that might make a good article: The Milan prosecutor, which is in charge of the case, discovered that Telecom Italia hid the Swiss bank accounts of senior executives. These accounts had been discovered by Kroll.

Ah, você não está entendendo nada? Eu explico.

Ah, you don’t get any of this? Let me explain.

Jumping Jupiter: On Wishes, Phishes, Wise Guys and Cries of Spies

NS-21: Who is going to wind up in deep shit over deep, dark deep-water data?

In case you missed the news, it appears that the HM Revenue and Customs put the details of approximately 25 million UK residents on CDs and sent them to another government department. The only problem was that the discs never reached the destination so nobody knows exactly what happened with them. Among the details copied on the CDs there were names, addresses, birth dates and more dangerous, bank details. That’s why the government advised all the residents who might be affected by this data loss to check their accounts for fraud. —Softpedia recently

Phishers target HMRC data loss victims: Finextra, a cheerful little news aggregator for the payments sector, reports on an attempt to exploit a widely reported case of data mismanagement.

Phishing fraudsters have been targeting people whose confidential details may have been contained on computer discs lost last year by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), according to Internet security firm McAfee.

Finextra tends to just run rewritten press releases.

McAfee says phishing e-mails have been sent to UK citizens offering an opportunity to claim a tax refund of £215 from the UK government. But the e-mails contain a link to a “suspect” Web site based in Germany. The bogus site has now been shut down.

Here in Brazil, the question of data security has made headlines recently with the theft of laptops in transit from an exploratory drilling platform that had just discovered what promise to be enormous gas and oil reserves off the Brazilian coast. See also

• Petrobras Flash: Laptop Cop Was a Gas, Gas, Gas?

Was it industrial espionage or common theft? The debate, based on incomplete information and technically deficient reporting on technical issues, rages on, with the investigation leaking like mad in favor of the latter theory.

CartaCapital has an interview this week with the former president of the National Petroleum Agency (1998-2003). He opines that the spy hypothesis is improbable and has been given “moral panic” treatment in the press. The president of Brazil has called the possibility of industrial espionage “a question of state.”

The Estado de S. Paulo has been one of the few news organizations insisting that there is serious reason to run down the former theory of the case.

The ESP noted the other day, however, that the Economist had mocked these espionage concerns, noting that theft is common at the Port of Santos, for example, and other “corrupt and disorganized” Brazilian ports. I should see if I can find that article. I hardly ever read the Economist (the British one) anymore

We sent some personal stuff through Santos recently, and it all got here.

For what it’s worth.

On “Brazilian ports and freight terminals are a logistical nightmare” — a deserved reputation that may actually be changing with increased investment in the area — see also

• Globo’s Port Report Comes Up Short

Today, the ESP notes that a third theft of IT equipment belonging to Halliburton might also lead police away from the espionage theory.

The question of why you would continue to pay third-party service provider to store and transport valuable data after a fubar of this magnitude is another question, I guess.

Ecce Veja, Dantas’ Inferno and Nassif’s Disbelief: Preliminary Notes on Dona Janaína and the Hackeraggio Ragazzi

Mainardi’s Milan Document: Some sort of raggazzi seem to have been engaging in hackeraggio and expecting ricompensa for doing so. Reading.

The anta my friend’s a preposterous beast
The Tupi all think he’s a glorious feast
Likewise the viola is not a guitar
But if you learn how to twang one you can go pretty far
–Zebu Cavaco & His Cur-Deus Homos, “The Gringo Violeiro’s Wobbly Waltz”

Diogo Mainardi’s column in the latest edition of Veja is a perfect case study in the manipulation of news to suit the purposes of [parties to] business disputes.

“Iemanjá, lemanjá
lemanjá é dona Janaína que vem
Iemanjá, Iemanjá
lemanjá é muita tristeza que vem
–Vinicius and Baden Powell, Os Afro-Sambas

Lula é meu álibi: The latest chapter in a series by Brazilian business journalist Luis Nassif on peculiar goings-on at Veja magazine, published by the Editora Abril. Whose products, we should disclose, we do not consume.

Life is too short, and the dollar too weak at the moment, to pay for the privilege of being jerked around and lied to.

This is something one can do to oneself, free of charge.

I have been dusting off my (rusty and never more than barely adequate) Italian to read some of the putative reports in question here, supposedly from the Italian investigation into ratfink business tactics carried on by Telecom Italia under its former management.

It is colorful, to say the least. Black-hat hacking seems to loom large, and Nassif gets into some of that in this chapter, titled “Lula is my alibi: Political cover for [gabbling ratfink-driven business disputes].”

The subtitle quips on the title of Veja columnist Diogo Mainardi’s last book, a collection of columns called something like “[President] Lula is my [tapirus terrestris].” The anta is the local name for the tapir, which is quite an interesting animal.

On TV Globo’s late-night Letterman clone, Mainardi explained that he did not mean, with that title, to suggest that the president of Brazil is as proverbially stupid as the anta, but rather that Mainardi, Elmer Fudd-like, considered Lula his beast of prey.

That he “had Lula in his gunsights,” like some [also proverbially tasty, in parts of the country; great for luau-like anta roasts] miniature South American pachyderm.

Metaphors of political violence loom large in Veja‘s hysterical vision of the world. See also

• “Violence is a Natural Part of the Political Process”: Diogo Mainardi and the Hog Heaven of the Hard Men.

Por várias razões, a coluna de Diogo Mainardi, na última edição de Veja, é exemplar para uma análise de caso, sobre a manipulação das notícias para propósitos de disputas empresariais.

For a number of reasons, Diogo Mainardi’s column in the latest edition of Veja is a perfect case of the manipulation of news to suit the interests of [parties to] business disputes.

Consiste em juntar um conjunto de informações detalhadas (número de contas, de cheques, valores) e compor uma salada, muitas vezes sem lógica, confiando na falta de discernimento dos leitores. Compensa-se a falta de lógica com excesso de detalhes. Depois, se confia que a complexidade do tema impedirá que as afirmações sejam conferidas.

It consists of heaping up details (account numbers, check numbers, sums of money) and making a salad out of them, often without any logic, trusting to the reader’s lack of discernment. The lack of logic is compensated for by the superabundance of details. Subsequently, the complexity of the issue is relied on to discourage anyone from checking the statements made.

As my old daddy used to say: “Son, if you cannot dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.”

A coluna falava do inquérito que corre na Itália sobre operações fraudulentas da Telecom Itália. Mainardi alegou ter informações reservadas do inquérito. Não as divulgou. Limitou-se a acenar com ameaças a jornalistas que ousassem criticá-lo. Blefou para chantagear.

The column had to do with the investigation in Italy into fraudulent activities by Telecom Itália. Mainardi claimms to have privileged information from the investigation. But did not publish this information. He limited himself to threatening journalist who dare to criticize him. Bluffing in order to blackmail.

The Disbelief of Luis Nassif: Mainardi’s Samba Italiano

Mainardi of Veja writes: “My seven Italian informants continue to send me documents referring to the industrial espionage case against Telecom Italia, led by Italian prosecutor Fabio Napoleone. As soon as the documents arrive here, I send them off to the Brazilian courts. And I grandly declare as follows: If Brazil has any chance of making it, it is through the rule of law. Have we seen the last of the Telecom Italia affair? Hmmmm, hmmm. No, there’s more. I just got a new package.”

Ti ricordi, gioconda,
Di quella sera in guarujá
Quando il mare ti portava via
E me chiamaste
Aiuto, marcello!
La tua gioconda a paura di quest’onda
–Adoniran Barbosa, “Samba Italiano”

O bookmark de Mainardi: “Mainardi’s bookmark.”

Veteran Brazilian business journalist (and reputed cavaquinho virtuoso) Luis Nassif has been writing a series of articles on the habitual use of rumor, innuendo, and phony “dossiers” at Veja magazine, allegedly in the undisclosed service of interested parties to balls-out Hobbesian business disputes worthy of chief Nixonian dirty trickster Donald Segretti (J.D., UC Berkeley, 1966).

Slightly controversial Bahia-born, MIT-trained venture capitalist Daniel Valente Dantas — not to be confused with the soap-opera actor Daniel Dantas — is defending himself against criminal and civil cases in Brazil and elsewhere by contending that (1) Telecom Italia framed him for the bugging of journalists and senior government officials (of both the current government and the last one) in the so-called “Kroll affair,” and (2) that he is the victim of political persecution by corrupt government officials in Brazil.

Veja ran a dossier prepared at Dantas’ behest in May 2006 purporting to show that Brazilian government officials (including two former heads of the federal police, one of them now an opposition senator for São Paulo) controlled bribe-stuffed offshore bank accounts.

Nassif continues:

Terminei o capítulo anterior narrando a tentativa de chantagem de Diogo Mainardi, em seu podcast semanal na Veja. Nele, o colunista afirmava dispor de informações que comprometeriam jornalistas, mas não as divulgava. Apenas ameaçava quem se metesse com ele.

I concluded the last chapter by recounting a blackmail attempt by Veja columnist Diogo Mainardi in his weekly podcast for the magazine. In the podcast, he claimed to have information that would compromise [unnamed] journalists, but he did not make it public. He merely threatened to do so if they messed with him.

Na semana seguinte (atual edição da revista), Mainardi avançaria alguns pontos em sua chantagem[.] Na quinta, em novo podcast que reiterava as ameaças. Ora, se possuía as informações, por que não as divulgava?

The following week (the current edition of the magazine), Mainardi would move forward on a few points. On Thursday, in a new podcast which repeated the threats. But hey, if he has this information, why doesn’t he publish it?

Três pontos chamavam a atenção:

Three points are worth noting:

Ponto 1 – Dizia que graças ao fato de ter morado na Itália tinha muitas fontes italianas. “Meus sete informantes italianos continuam a me mandar documentos referentes ao processo por espionagem contra a Telecom Italia, conduzido pelo Procurador da República Fabio Napoleone”. Informação falsa.

(1) He said that thanks to the fact that he has lived in Italy he has a lot of Italian sources. “My seven Italian informants continue to send me documents referring to the industrial espionage case against Telecom Italia, led by the prosecutor Napoleone.” This is not true.

Para ouvir, clique aqui

To listen, click here:

I would rather pierce my eardrums with rusty nails.

Um pequeno detalhe liquidava com sua versão: o post-it do arquivo PDF (chamado de bookmark, anotação que se coloca na barra do documento).

A small detail undermines this claim: A post-it note in the PDF file (called a “bookmark,” an annotation that is placed in a sidebar to the document.)

122 – Wiretaps: De Marco and Angra Partners

Como se sabe, o arquivo PDF pode ser editado, mas as alterações ficam registradas. No caso do relatório, alguém pegou partes do inquérito (que é sigiloso), scaneou e imprimiu.

As we know, a PDF file can be edited, but the alterations are marked. In the case of this report, someone has taken parts of the case (which is sealed and confidential), scanned it and printed it.

I think this point probably needs a more detailed technical explanation. It is not very sexy as a “smoking gun” moment, even if one does take Mr. Nassif’s point.

I mean, do you understand the professional edition of Adobe Acrobat? I have been using it for years, and I confess I do not, not perfectly.

I tend to use Evince to read these files, and open source PDF and Postscript tools when I need to jigger with them. But it is true that it has annotation tools.

Fez mais. Anotou os comentários dos principais trechos com a ferramenta. Depois, eliminou todos os bookmarks, mas esqueceu um: aquele que indicava, na página 122, “Grampos – De Marco e Angra Partners”, no mais puro português do Brasil. Nas “Propriedades do Documento” havia as informações de que ele fora criado em 21 de janeiro de 2008 e modificado em 22 de janeiro – antes da data que Mainardi informava tê-lo recebido.

There’s more. They used the tool to add comments to the main passages. Then they erased all the bookmarks, but forgot one: One that reads, on p. 122, “Wiretaps: De Marco and Angra Partners,” in pure Brazilian Portuguese. Under “document properties” there is the information that the document was created on January 21, 2008 and modified on January 22 — before the date Mainardi reports having received it.

É evidente que não era nenhuma das “sete fontes italianas” que enviara a documentação para Mainardi, mas uma fonte brasileira. Por que a insistência em mentir sobre a origem da fonte?

Obviously, it was not one of the “seven Italian sources” that sent this document to Mainardi, but rather a Brazilian source. Why would Mainardi insist on lying about the origin of his source?

I suppose an Italian might learn Portuguese.

Our dear Nona, for example, who is 95, is a living dictionary of the whacky Italo-Tupi idiom celebrated in Adoniran Barbosa’s classic “Samba Italiano.”

Gioconda, pitina mia,
Vai brincar alí no mareí no fundo,
Mas atencione co os tubarone, ouvisto
Capito meu san benedito.

It’s a comic mix of Italian and Portuguese (brincar), with Brazilian cultural references (São Benedito: cras hodie!) All of which is, of course, beside the point.

It looks to me like somebody took a hard copy of the excerpt from whatever document this is — which has a lot of heavy, messy manual markings and highlightings in it — and scanned it into a PDF file, then used a PDF to annotate the thing.

Mainardi on Globo’s late-night Jô Xô repeats the unsubstantiated rumor that senior government officials have bribe-stuffed offshore bank accounts — defending the exercise in logic-chopping gibberish with a gibbering tautology.

Por que todas as indicações são de que sua fonte é Daniel Dantas – o mesmo Dantas que, quando foi desmascarado o dossiê falso sobre as contas fantasmas, Mainardi foi incumbido de acudir (clique aqui).

Because all indications are that his source is Daniel Dantas — the same Dantas whom Mainardi was assigned to rescue when his phony dossier on the ghost accounts was unmasked.

Pior: os grampos eram em cima de adversários de Dantas. Logo, as vítimas eram os adversários de Dantas, não o banqueiro. Quem encaminhou o arquivo para Mainardi deixou escapar não apenas o post-it como a informação. Mainardi obviamente nem leu o cartapácio: limitou-se a se deixar cavalgar.

What is worse: The wiretaps were used against adversaries of Dantas, which means that the victims were, not Dantas, but his enemies. Whoever sent this file to Mainardi slipped up not only by leaving the “post-it” in but also in the information provided. Mainardi has obviously not even read this [weighty tome]. He has merely let himself be “ridden.”

New vocabulary word of the day: cartapácio.

sm 1 Carta grande. 2 Coleção de manuscritos em forma de livro. 3 Livro de lembranças ou apontamentos; canhenho. 4 Calhamaço, alfarrábio.

1. Long letter. 2. Collection of manuscripts in book form. 3. Book of appointments or memoranda; notebook. 4. [synonyms]

A calhamaço is, metaphorically, a fat, ugly woman. An alfarrábio is, among other things,

Obra muito extensa, sem correspondente importância.

A very long work without importance corresponding to its length.

I have written memos like that in my time. For which I apologize.

“Ridden” is lingo for a journalist who merely “channels” what sources say to him or her, without independently checking it.

It’s similar to what I tend to call “reputation laundering.”

The byline of the columnist, who adds nothing to what has been leaked to him or her, conceals the fact that the source is an undisclosed interested party.

When Intel placed a “fake news” video news release with a Fox News program a couple of years ago, for example — the news program ran it as its own work, overdubbing the voice of its own “reporter” reading the advertiser-produced script, without attribution to the source — it identified one of the sources interviewed as an “anthropologist” rather than as “an anthropologist on the Intel payroll.”

This is a form of blunt dishonesty similar to plagiarism. It is perhaps best and most succinctly described as “fake news.”

(O arquivo pode ser encontrado no seguinte link, indicado na coluna dele, na última Veja (clique aqui). Para evitar alguma mudança no documento original, baixei o arquivo e o coloquei em outro endereço (clique aqui).)

(The file can be found at the following link from Mainardi’s column in the last edition of Veja [link]. To avoid any changes to the original document, I downloaded it and mirrored it at another URL [link].)

Version control is very, very important.

I am currently trying to get a potential client of mine to grok this point.

Ponto 2 – “Assim que os documentos chegam aqui em casa, eu os encaminho à magistratura brasileira.. Se o Brasil tem uma saída, só pode ser através das leis”. A troco de que um jornalista ou para-jornalista recebe informações e, em vez de divulgá-las, as encaminha ao judiciário? Isso é papel de advogado. Tenho algumas hipóteses que analisarei no próximo capítulo.

Second point: “As soon as the documents arrive here at home, I send them to the Brazilian courts. If there is any way forward for Brazil, it will only come from the rule of law.” In exchange for what does a journalist or parajournalist get information and, instead of publishing them, send them to the judiciary? That is the job of a lawyer. I have some theories on this point that I will set forth in the next chapter.

Ponto 3 – Mencionava o fato do empresário Luiz Roberto Demarco ter recebido US$ 1 milhão. E dava detalhes da conta que mantinha em Miami, em nome de um sócio, e que teria recebido US$ 100 mil.

Third point: He mentioned the fact that [former Dantas associate] Luiz Roberto Demarco received US$1 million. And he gave details of an account he maintains in Miami in the name of an associate who reportedly received US$100,000.

Lembrava as relações de Demarco com fundos e imprensa. Sugere, obviamente, que parte desse dinheiro veio para a imprensa. Mas não ousava uma acusação, nomes, detalhes, nada. Também será analisado no próximo capítulo.

He recalled Demarco’s ties to the pension funds and the media. He is suggesting, obviously, that part of this money went to journalists. But he did not dare to accuse anyone, names, details, nothing. I will take that up in the next chapter as well.

Finalmente, dizia que o nome do Presidente da República tinha sido mencionado no inquérito.

Finally, he says that the name of the president of Brazil had come up in the case.

Guarde essas informações, por enquanto. Para melhor facilitar o entendimento, antes de avançar na análise vamos a uma pequena coleção de episódios jornalísticos, para explicar didaticamente – como estudo de caso – como ocorre a manipulação da notícia no mundo das disputas jurídico-empresariais.

Hang on to this information for the time being. To make things clearer, before going on to analyze it, let’s look at a small collection of journalistic case studies in order to see how manipulation of the news works in legal disputes involving businesses.

Imprensa e Judiciário

The press and the judiciary

Um dos pontos principais do manual de guerrilha nas disputas corporativas, é o uso das notícias como ferramenta auxiliar – seja para “assassinar reputações” ou “plantar” matérias para influenciar (ou fornecer álibis) para as sentenças dos juízes.

One of the first principles in the handbook of corporate guerrilla warfare is the use of news items as a force multiplier — whether as a weapon of “character assassination” or to “plant” articles to influence the decisions of judges, or provide alibis for the parties.

Episódio 1: o caso Lauro Jardim

Episode 1: The Case of Lauro Jardim

Em agosto de 2000, por exemplo, os advogados dos fundos de pensão, liderados pelo ex-presidente da CVM (Comissão de Valores Mobiliários) Francisco da Costa e Silva, conseguiram realizar uma Assembléia Geral Extraordinária (AGE) do CVC-Opportunity – o fundo que controlava a Brasil Telecom. Foi a primeira vez que isso ocorreu, apesar de parte relevante do capital do CVC ser dos fundos.

In August 2000, for example, attorneys for the pension funds, led by Costa e Silva, the former head of the CVM, Brazil’s securities regulator, managed to hold a special shareholders’ meeting (AGE) of CVC-Opportunity, which controlled Brasil Telecom. It was the first such meeting every held, even though a signficiant portion of the shares in CVC were held by the funds.

Under local law, an extraordinary meeting can be convened at the request of shareholders representing [x]% of the equity in the company.

Com o controle da AGE, os fundos indicaram o advogado Fernando Albino para presidi-la. Albino autorizou que Costa e Silva retirasse as atas e documentos do CVC, para que pudesse xeroca-los. No dia seguinte, os documentos foram devolvidos, tudo de acordo com a lei e com as decisões da AGE.

In control of the AGE, the funds nominated attorney Albino to preside. Albino authorized Costa e Silva to obtain the minutes and documents from CVC so he could xerox them. On the following day, the documents were returned, all according to the law and the resolutions passed by the AGE.

A resposta de Dantas foi imediata, através da revista Veja.

Dantas’ reply was immediate, and came through Veja magazine.

Trombadas e trombadinhas

[Colorful expression; let us just guesstimate this as “mountains and molehills” for the time being, provisionally]

‘São cada vez menos elegantes as ações de certos advogados em defesa de seus clientes. Na semana passada, depois de uma tensa reunião entre os fundos de pensão e o banco Opportunity – que andam se estapeando em público há meses –, Francisco da Costa e Silva, advogado da Previ e ex-presidente da CVM, surrupiou a ata do encontro e se mandou. Supõe-se que ele saiba que o que fez é proibido pela legislação.”

“Certain lawyers are resorting to ever more elegant tactics in their defense of clients, [Veja writes]. Last week, after a tense meeting between the pension funds and the Opportunity Bank — which have been trading blows in public for months now — Costa e Silva, the former CVM president who represents Previ, snuck off with the meeting minutes. It is to be supposed he knew that what he did was against the law.”

A nota saiu na edição de 16 de agosto de 2000 [sic] (clique aqui). Seção: Radar. Colunista: Lauro Jardim, o mesmo jornalista que aproximou o quarteto de Veja de Dantas.

That item ran on August 16, 2000 [sic] (click here), in the Radar section. Columnist: Lauro Jardim, the same journalist who introduced Dantas to the Four Horsemen of Veja.

Copydesk: Check that date. I think there has been a fat-finger typo there.

“Four Horsemen” is my creative contribution, of course; Nassif refers to them merely as the “quartet.”

Costa e Silva precisou enviar e-mail para cada um de seus clientes, para reduzir o estrago provocado pela nota. Mandou uma carta de esclarecimentos para a Veja – que não foi publicada.

Costa e Silva had to send an e-mail to each and every one of his clients to control the damage done by that item. He sent a letter with corrections to Veja — which was never published.

Episódio 2: o caso Attuch-Rocha Mattos

Episode 2: The Attuch-Rocha Mattos Case

Uma segunda manipulação da imprensa consiste na articulação entre diversos jornalistas, para dar foro de verdade a qualquer boato e, com isso, álibi para uma sentença favorável de algum juiz. Um jornalista divulga o primeiro boato ou notícia, verdadeira ou não, obtida por meios legais ou ilegais. Depois, outros jornalistas cooptados promovem a repercussão, garantindo o álibi para a sentença ou despacho do juiz. Esse modelo foi utilizado várias vezes no decorrer do último ano.

A second manipulation of the news consisted of a concerted campaign by a number of journalists to give prominent play to any and every rumor, whether founded or not, and with this, to provide an alibi to cover a favorable ruling by a given judge. A journalist runs the first news or rumor, obtained legally or illegally. Coopted journalists who are in on the scheme promote continuing coverage and prominent placement for the story, creating an alibi for the judge’s sentence or ruling. This model was used a number of times in the last year.

Em 8 de maio de 2002, despacho do notório juiz João Carlos da Rocha Mattos, da Quarta Vara Criminal de São Paulo para o Delegado Ariovaldo Peixoto dos Anjos, Superintendente da Policia Federal em São Paulo determina o seguinte:

O May 8, 2002, a order by the notorious Judge Rocha Mattos of the Fourth Criminal Bar of São Paulo, addressed to the superintendent of the federal police for São Paulo, Peixoto dos Anjos, determined as follows:

“Senhor superintendente,

Superintendent:

Pelo presente, encaminho a Vossa Senhoria, em anexo, matérias veiculadas nas edições 242, de 17.04.2002 e 244, de 01.05.2002, da revista “IstoÉ Dinheiro”, ambos os episódios (ilegível) o controle (ilegível) das empresas de telefonia celular Telemig Celular e Tele Amazônia, com menção inclusive a altos funcionários do Banco do Brasil e do Fundo de Pensão Previ, decorrentes de gravações de diálogos telefônicos mantidos entre as partes interessadas, envolvendo, em especial, o presidente da empresa canadense TIW, Bruno Ducharme”.

“By these presents[, the judge writes to the PF superintendent,] I forward to you, attached, the articles published in Istoé Dinheiro magazine No. 242 (April 17, 200) and No. 244 (May 1, 2002), both episodes [illegible] the [illegible] control of cellular telephone firms Telemig and Tele Amazônia, even mentioning senior officials of the Bank of Brazil and the Previ pension fund, based on recordings of telephone conversations among the interested parties, involved, in particular, the president of the Canadian firm TIW, Bruno Ducharme. ”

Matérias jornalísticas semelhantes às mencionadas foram publicadas em outros órgãos de imprensa e, ao menos em princípio, constitui indício de credibilidade dos graves acontecimentos veiculados nas gravações das conversas telefônicas, se não se sabe se teriam ou não sido obtidas licitamente (…)” (clique aqui).

“Reports similar to the ones mentioned above, [the judge continues,] ran in other publications, and in principle at least, lend credibility to the serious matters contained in the wiretap transripts, although we do not know whether they were obtained legally or illegally …” [link]

A matéria, em questão, era de Leonardo Attuch. Houve repercussão em alguns outros órgãos de mídia, o suficiente para garantir o álibi para o despacho do juiz.

The article in question was by Leonardo Attuch. The story was picked up and amplified by other news agencies to a sufficient degree that it provided the judge’s ruling with an alibi.

Rocha Mattos tornou-se, anos depois, um dos símbolos máximos da corrupção do Judiciário em São Paulo. Está preso até hoje.

In later years, Rocha Mattos would become one of the major symbols of judicial corruption in São Paulo. He is currently in jail.

This as a result of the Operation Anaconda judicial corruption investigation, which has given rise to others, such as Themis and Hurricane.

Basically, selling favorable judicial decisions at very unreasonable prices to people whose ability to afford such prices stems from their involvement in extremely sociopathic behavior.

This is some wild and woolly shit, I am telling you.

Episódio 3: o caso Janaína Leite

Episode 3: The Janaína Leite Case

Esse caso é relevante por estar inserido na atual onda midiática de Dantas. Antes de contar, algumas explicações para facilitar o entendimento de atos e respectivas conseqüências.

This case is highly relevant to the current wave of media related to Dantas. Before I narrate it, let me explain a few things so you can better understand what happened and what the consequences were.

Primeiro, entenda qual é o objetivo jurídico do Opportunity quando articula sua rede de colaboradores em torno do inquérito sobre a Telecom Itália, que corre na justiça italiana. A partir daí ficará mais fácil compreender os movimentos de Diogo Mainardi e de outros jornalistas que trabalham de forma articulada em torno do tema.

First, you need to understand what Opportunity’s legal objective is when it activates its network of [stooges] with respect to the Telecom Italia case in Italy. Once you do that, it will be easier to understand what Mainardi and other journalists who are working in a coordinated manner on the topic are up to.

Houve duas investigações sobre Dantas: uma legal, conduzida pelo Ministério Público e pela Policia Federal, com grampos, quebras de sigilo, tudo ao amparo da lei.

There were two investigations of Dantas. The first was legal, run by the federal prosecutor and the federal police, using wiretaps, court-ordered access to private records, all within the law.

Paralelamente, aqui no Brasil, houve investigações da Telecom Itália – na gestão do cappo Marco Tronchetti Provera, no começo adversário, depois aliado de Dantas. Foram investigações ilegais, criminosas, sem autorização judicial.

At the same time, here in Brazil, there were investigations of the man by Telecom Italia, during the administration of Tronchetti Provera, who began as an adversary and later became an ally of Dantas. These were illegal and criminal, without judicial authorization.

É importante não entender a Telecom Itália como uma empresa com continuidade de ação. A empresa passou por vários controladores nos últimos anos. Todos os episódios relatados se referem à era Provera (que já foi afastado do seu comando), que começou combatendo Dantas e terminou se aliando a ele.

It is important not to think of Telecom Italia as a firm that acts coherently and consistently. It has changed hands several times in recent years. All the episodes just referred to go back to the administration of Provera (who has since been stripped of control), who began as a Dantas adversary and ended up allying himself with the Bahian banker.

O que os advogados de Dantas buscam é a chamada “contaminação do inquérito” – isto é, trazer para o inquérito da PF o inquérito da Telecom Itália e as vinculações brasileiras. Fazendo isso, Dantas se livra. Qualquer juiz considerará que o inquérito se baseou em práticas ilegais. Daí o termo “contaminação”: as ilegalidades da Telecom Itália no Brasil (sob Tronchetti Provera) comprometerão os trabalhos legais da Policia Federal e do MP, porque estarão ambos reunidos no mesmo inquérito. E tudo terminará em pizza.

What Dantas’ lawyers seek to establish is, as they say, to “taint the investigation” — that is, to bring the Telecom Italia affair into [confuse it with] the legal investigation by the Brazilian feds. If he can do this, Dantas might get off. Any judge would consider the investigation based on illegal conduct. Thus the term “taint” or “contamination”: The illegal activities of TI in Brazil would undermine the legitimate work of the MP and feds, because both would be seen as the same case. And everything would end, as they say, in pizza.

“Fruit of the poison tree” is, I think, the concept at work here. “Tainted evidence.”

… end in pizza: Ends in fear, uncertainty and doubt that permits no firm conclusions to be drawn, so that everyone gets off scot free and nothing is revealed. It comes from the bitter observation, “at the end of the [inconclusive] case, the prosecution and the defense went out together for pizza [to celebrate the backroom deal.] Something like that. Pizza is an inspired bit of Brazilian jargon for murky backroom deals.

Insisto: anote bem essas observações, porque ficará mais fácil entender os caminhos que Diogo Mainardi passou a trilhar.

I say it again: Note these observations well, because they will make it easier to understand what Diogo Mainardi is up to.

No julgamento de 12/12/2006, a Segunda Turma do Tribunal Federal Regional da 3a Região, acompanhou o voto da relatora – desembargadora Cecília Mello – e exigiu a incorporação do inquérito italiano ao inquérito brasileiro contra o Opportunity.

In the proceedings held on December 12, 2006, the Second Chamber of the Third Regional Federal Court upheld the opinion of the reporting justice — Cecília Mello — and ordered that the Italian investigation be joined to the Brazilian investigation into Opportunity.

No seu voto, a relatora sustenta que o argumento dos advogados do Opportunity é que o inquérito da PF teve origem em prova ilícita, gravação de uma conversa entre Ângelo Jannone (chefe dos arapongas italianos) e Tiago Verdial (o português que tinha trabalhado na Kroll).

In her opinion, Mello says that what Opportunity is arguing is that the federal investigation orginates from evidence obtained illegally: a recorded phone conversation between Ângelo Jannone (chief of the Italian spies) and Itago Verdial (the Portuguese man who had worked for Kroll.)

A desembargadora levou em conta reportagens jornalísticas que, segundo a desembargadora, noticiam “fatos gravíssimos”.

The judge took into account journalistic articles that, in her view, related “very serious facts.”

As reportagens são de Janaína Leite, da “Folha” de São Paulo, repórter que ganhou espaço no jornal no longo período, na grande noite que acompanhou a agonia e falecimento do grande reformador do jornal Otávio Frias de Oliveira.

The reporting in question was by Janaína Leite of the Folha de S. Paulo, a reporter whose star rose at the paper on that night when she reported on the final agony and death of the paper’s great reformer, Otávio Frias de Oliveira.

Até então, a área de telefonia e esses embates corporativos eram cobertos por Elvira Lobato – de longe a mais preparada e isenta repórter investigativa da área. De repente, o tema passa para a instância de Janaína Leite.

Until that time, the telecom industry and these corporate quarrels were covered by Elvira Lobato — by far the most informed and objective investigative reporter in the field. Suddenly, the beat was passed to Janaína Leite.

I can honestly say I came to the same conclusion about Ms. Lobato before I even knew who she was (I have been reading her excellent little book lately).

This just from reading a report of hers and checking to see how many of the Five Ws were covered, and in how much depth.

Result: All of them, deeper than the Marianas Trench.

Here at NMM, we call this the “infodensity test” (IDT), which — coupled with a measurement of how much subsequently turns out to have been gabbling bullshit [the “prognostication failure rate” or PFR] — provides a rough guide to whether you should pay someone to tell you what is what or not.

A matéria mencionada pela desembargadora é de 21 de setembro de 2006 (clique aqui), e diz o seguinte:

The article mentioned by the judge ran on September 21, 2006 (click here) and states as follows:

Segundo a Folha apurou junto a pessoas que colaboram nas investigações italianas, não está descartada a possibilidade de ramificações do caso acabarem no Brasil, onde a Telecom Italia participa de duas operadoras: a fixa Brasil Telecom e a móvel TIM Brasil.

The Folha has learned from persons involved in the Italian investigations that possible ramifications in Brazil, where TI has a stake in BrT and TIM Brasil, have not been discarded in the case.

Reparem no modelo de atuação:

Observe how it works:

1. A repórter Janaína Leite publica uma matéria dizendo que há probabilidade das investigações sobre a Telecom Itália terem ramificações no Brasil. Diz que a “Folha” apurou.

1. Reporter Janaína Leite publishes an article saying it is likely the TI investigation in Italy will have ramifications in Brazil. She says that the Folha “learned” this.

There is a line in the editorial manual about using this phrase — segundo a Folha apurou — to indicate the product of original reporting that no one else has. It is the designated “scoop” phrase, in a word: We found this out, and corroborated this, on our own, and no one else has it.

2. Com base nessa matéria, os advogados do Opportunity pedem que os inquéritos italianos sejam anexados aos da PF. Com isso conseguiriam “contaminar” o inquérito brasileiro.

Based on this article, Opportunity lawyers ask that the Italian investigations be joined to the federal investigation. In this way, they would succeed in “tainting” the Brazilian investigation.

3. A desembargadora Cecília Mello aprova o pedido, citando como elemento os “fatos gravíssimos” que constam da matéria de Janaína

3. Cecília Mello approves the petition, citing the “grave facts” reported in Janaína’s article.

4. Na semana passada, a Justiça (de Primeira Instância) tomou o depoimento de Rodrigo Andrade, que trabalha para o Opportunity. Pressionado a revelar seus contatos na imprensa, inclusive sob ameaça de prisão, Rodrigo informou que era Janaína Leite.

4. Last week, the court (the court of first instance) took the deposition of Rodrigo Andrade, who works for Opportunity. Pressured to reveal his contacts in the press, on pain of arrest, Rodrigo said his contact was Janaína Leite.

Ouch. Add to wall of shame, along with Christofoletti. This is why I do buy the Folha.

Não apenas Janaína, mas outros membros da rede se incorporaram à trama. A orquestração era clara.

Not just Janaína, but other members of the network joined in the plot. The orchestration was glaringly obvious.

No dia 11 de outubro de 2006, Diogo Mainardi publicava a coluna “Notícias da Itália”, com o seguinte intertítulo (clique aqui ou clique aqui):

On October 11, 2006, Mainardi published the column headined “News from Italy,” with the following [teaser]:

“O caso estourou duas semanas atrás. Os promotores públicos milaneses descobriram que a Telecom Italia tinha um esquema de pagamentos ilegais a autoridades brasileiras. O lulismo realmente ganhou o mundo. Em sua forma mais autêntica: o dinheiro sujo”

“The case exploded two weeks ago. The Milan prosecutors had discovered that Telecom Italia had a scheme of illegal payments to Brazilian officials. Lulism really did “gain the whole world. In its most authentic form: dirty money.”

Na edição da “IstoÉ Dinheiro” de 4 de outubro de 2006 (da mesma semana), o enviado especial a Milão, Leonardo Attuch, bateu na mesma tecla (clique aqui).

In the October 4, 2006 edition of IstoÉ Dinheiro, special Milan correspondent Leonardo Attuch [insisted on the same point]:

On Attuch, see also

• From the Annals of Brazilian Lynch-Mob Journalism: Attuch x Veja In the Case of the Sinister Fat-Finger Data-Entry Error
• Brazil: Reviewing IstoÉ’s “The Spy Who Bugged Me”
• Brazil: Attuch’s Book of Revelations

“Caso Kroll: foi armação? Investigação na Itália aponta que políticos e policiais podem ter recebido dinheiro para deflagrar ação contra o grupo Opportunity”.

“The Kroll case: Was it a frame-up? Investigation in Italy indicates that politicians and policemen received money to act against Opportunity Group.”

A única diferença é que, para disfarçar sua atuação, Mainardi sempre trata de incluir Lula na história. Poderia lançar um segundo livro, “Lula, Meu Álibi”.

The only difference is that in order to disguise what he is doing, Mainardi always tries to involve the president of Brazil in the story. He should release a new book titled Lula is my alibi.

Attuch nunca teve esses cuidados.

Attuch has never taken any such precautions.

Hoje em dia, Janaína não mais trabalha na “Folha”. Os demais jornalistas e parajornalista continuam atuantes em seus respectivos órgãos de imprensa.

Janaína no longer works at the Folha. The other journalists and the parajournalist continue working for their respective publications.

A blogger since 2007 and author of Arrastão, Janaína describes herself as

Teimosa de plantão, atua hoje como consultora. Ao longo dos últimos dez anos trabalhou como repórter em São Paulo e Brasília. Passou por alguns dos veículos mais importantes do país (Folha de S.Paulo, Época e Gazeta Mercantil, entre outros).

… [a] hard-nosed beat reporter [who] now works as a consultant. Over the last ten years, worked as a reporter in São Paulo and Brasília. Has worked for some of most important news publications in Brazil (Folha, Época and the Gazeta Mercantil, among others.)

Esse modelo de articulação advogados-jornalistas ocorreu em todo esse período e continua a ocorrer, mas com novos personagens se incorporando ao círculo.

[Nassif goes on:] This lawyer-journalist nexus has been used throughout the current period and continues to be used, but with new characters added to the cast.

Como o capítulo está longo, deixaremos os detalhes para o próximo.

As this chapter is getting long, let’s leave the details until next time.

Uma dúvida fica no ar. Com todo a movimentação em cima do tema, com a série provocando repercussões no meio jornalístico, empresarial e na própria Abril, por que Mainardi insistiu no assunto, com a sutileza de um “prego sobre vinil”? Tenho hipóteses. A resposta quem tem é ele – e suas fontes.

There is one question left hanging, though. With all the to-do on this topic, and with this series of mine getting play in journalistic and business circles and at the Editora Abril, why does Mainardi continue to insist on it, with all the subtlety of “taking a nail to the vinyl”? I have my theories, but the answer lies with him — and his sources.

Whoever those sources may be.

“The Rio Police: Long Day’s Journey Into Night”

Cabeça de Porco, e-Paraguayan camelô edition. Note: We own an official copy as well. Support your local independent New World Lusophone publishing house.

From Cabeça de Porco (Editora Objetiva, 2005), by Luiz Eduardo Soares, rapper MV Bill, and Celso Athayde. On the title:

Cabeça de porco: cortiço. Na linguagem jovem das favelas cariocas, é sinônimo de situação sem saída, confusão.

Pig’s head: A slum. In the slang used by young people in Rio shantytowns, it is synonymous with a dead-end situation, a mess.

The excerpt comes from a postscript titled “The Rio Police: Long Day’s Journey into Night.”

If the Golden Bear-winning film Tropa de Elite takes off in the U.S. this year, perhaps some U.S. niche publisher might consider commissioning a translation. (Doubtful. Study the statistics on how much foreign literature in translation gets published in gringoland every year. A drop in the bucket.)

I translate, as ever, draft-quality and in haste.

Passo a tratar, agora, da polícia real, de como ela efetivamente tem sido, não da polícia ideal, concebida nos projetos com que, justifícadamente, sonhamos – nós, os críticos, e os policiais, aqueles que têm consciência do potencial democrático e humanista de sua instituição.

Let me talk now about the real police, what the police have actually become, and not the ideal police, as conceived in the plans we justifiably dream of — we, the critics, as well as the police themselves, those who are aware of the democratic and humanistic potential of their institution.

No Rio, não faria sentido falar do tráfico sem dar grande atenção à polícia, porque traficantes e policiais formam um sistema, uma única rede. Infelizmente, o Rio não é exatamente exceção única, nesta matéria.

In Rio, it makes no sense to talk about the drug traffic without paying close attention to the police as well, because traffickers and police form a system, a single network. Sadly, Rio is not a unique exception in this regard. 

Exemplo: o chefe do tráfico de conhecida favela carioca recebe um telefonema. Seu auxiliar lhe traz o celular usado para contatos especiais – não é o mesmo número do qual liga para seus parceiros na penitenciária.Ele atende, emite algumas interjeições, um ou outro palavrão e saúda o interlocutor que está na outra ponta da linha. Era a polícia avisando que o morro estava prestes a ser invadido. Ato contínuo, determina providências: “Os homens vão subir em uma hora. Separem uns vinte fuzis, deixem no lugar de sempre e recolham o pessoal.” Uma hora depois, chega a polícia fazendo o barulho costumeiro: tiros, gritos, movimentos de guerra. O comando avançado identifica o paiol, invade o barraco e apreende o lote de armas. Missão cumprida.

Example: The boss of the traffic in a well-known Rio shantytown gets a phone call. His assistant brings him the cell phone use for special contacts — it is not the same number he uses to call his business partners who are in prison. He answers, utters a few obscenities and interjections, and greets the person on the other end of the line. The next order of business is to plan the steps to be taken: “The Man is coming up in an hour. Take twenty assault rifles, leave them in the usual place, and pull your people back.” An hour later, here come the police, as noisy as ever: Gunshots, shouts, tactical maneuvers. The advance party locates the  cache, busts into the shanty and seizes the weapons. Mission accomplished.

Nenhuma prisão, os policiais lamentam para a mídia na entrada da favela; mas não voltam de mãos abanando: um punhado de novos troféus enriquece o currículo da corporação, mostra eficiência e desmente os detratores da polícia. A imprensa exibirá com destaque foto da corbeille de fuzis, enaltecendo o esforço do governo do Estado e a ação policial.

No arrests, the police are sorry to have to report to the news media gathered at the entrance to the shantytown; but they have not returned empty-handed: they have a fistful of new trophies to pad the resumé of the police force, demonstrate efficiency and answer the critics. The press will give prominent play to the [fruit basket] of assault rifles and praise the efforts of the police and state government to the skies.

No dia seguinte, conforme combinado, os fuzis são devolvidos, mas, neste caso específico, a ganância plantou um boi na linha: os negociadores da polícia querem cobrar um ágio, uma espécie de taxa, um preço pelas armas. Curto e grosso: querem revendê-las, em vez de devolvê-las, como previa o acerto, segundo o qual cada patrulha recebia 2 mil reais por dia.

On the following day, as planned, the assault rifles are returned, but in this specific case, greed has [placed an ox on the tracks]: The police negotiators want to collect a premium, a kind of tax, set a price on the weapons. To put it bluntly: They want to resell them instead of returning them as defined in the previous agreement, under which each patrol car would get R$2,000 per day.

Ai, Insensatez

Henry Maksoud

Behind every great fortune there is a crime –Balzac

Continuing to read José Venâncio de Resende’s oral history of Brazilian business journalism — Studs Terkel interviews the employees of Charles Foster Kane’s New York Inquirer — I come across a moment that rings uncannily true for me.

I feel that I have already met the man described here — Henry Maksoud, of the Maksoud Plaza Hotel fame — and have lived something like the experience recounted. Get me drunk sometime and I will tell you the story, or stories.

The same chapter also describes how Maksoud, after making a job offer to journalist Cláudio Abramo, then decided to clear the decision with the SNI, the spy agency of the Brazilian military dictatorship.

In his brief tenure as a correspondent for Visão, Pimenta Neves produced a number of articles on politics and a few on economics. “I did an enormous article for Visão about the bicentennial of the United States that, modesty aside, I thought was pretty interesting. In one part of the article, I referred to the ‘robber barons’ who played a very important role in American ‘savage capitalism’ during the economic development of the country – in American industry, American infrastructure …”

“Brazukes Swap Debit for Credit”

“It’s good to be the owner of your own nose.” –President Squid, 2007

Status de credor pode render grau de investimento ao Brasil, diz ‘LA Times’: “Creditor-nation status could lead to investment-grade rating, says Los Angeles Times,” reports G1/Globo.

Which apparently just cribs its domestic news from newspapers published in another hemisphere in another language. This story is, in fact, not filed by Globo reporters at all, but by BBC Brasil. Globo’s own original coverage consists entirely of a brief rewrite of the Central Bank press release.

Top headline in the LAT today: “Gang mayhem closes blocks in Northeast L.A.”

Didn’t I just read that the paper appointed its “innovation editor” to the top editorial post?

O anúncio do Banco Central de que o Brasil passou a ser credor no cenário internacional, graças ao crescimento de suas reservas internacionais, foi destaque na edição desta sexta-feira no jornal americano Los Angeles Times.

The announcement by the Central Bank that Brazil is now a net creditor on the international scene, thanks to the growth of its its foreign reserves, was given prominent play in the U.S. newspaper Los Angeles Times.

“A mudança do Brasil para o status de credor pode aumentar a confiança dos investidores na maior economia da América Latina e ajudar o Brasil a obter a classificação de grau de investimento”, afirma o LA Times.

“Brazil’s shift to creditor status could increase investor confidence in the largest Latin American economy and help Brazil obtain an investment-grade rating,” the Times says.

This is news?

Brazil: “1967 Press Law On Brink of Extinction”

“Freedom without (criminal) responsibility”: to my gringo-libertarian sensibilities, that seems about right. Civil liability ought to do the trick — once the average libel lawsuit stops dragging on for decades and the fact that some people use their freedom of expression to lie their asses off starts getting some ink.

Liminar suspende partes da Lei de Imprensa: Supreme court injuncion suspends part of the 1967 Press Law (Law 5,920 of February 9, 1967).

Handed down by order of the generalíssimo-presidente on my — and Carmen Miranda’s — birthday, by the way.

O ministro Carlos Ayres Britto, do Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF), concedeu liminar parcial a uma ação impetrada pelo deputado Miro Teixeira (PDT-RJ) que pediu a suspensão de artigos da Lei de Imprensa, editada pelo governo militar, em 1967. Com essa decisão, todos os processos judiciais que invocaram a lei e estão em tramitação ficam suspensos, assim como as decisões com base em 22 dispositivos dela, até o julgamento do mérito, a ser feito pelo plenário do STF.

Supreme Court justice Ayres Britto granted a partial stay in a lawsuit filed by federal legislator Miro Teixeira (PDT-RJ) that calls for the suspension of some articles of the Press Law, issued by the military government in 1967. With this decision, all current legal proceedings that cite the law are suspended as well, as are judicial rulings based on its 22 articles, until a final ruling by the full Supreme Court is made.

Score one for the PDT, the party of Leonel Brizola. An interesting bunch, the PDT.

The chief lobbyist for the National Newspaper Association (ANJ) takes the opportunity to hope that Press Law provisions making the right of reply mandatory will also be overturned.

There is an interesting clause in the law which makes the right of reply mandatory unless the reply is personally insulting to the person or publication being replied to.

Which is why, I think, for example, Veja magazine always acts all insulted when someone trying to reply to a story about them says that Veja journalism is not characterized by the highest standards of commitment to truthfulness and accuracy.
They used this as an excuse, for example, for not granting the right of reply to Franklin Martins — currently the Brazilian Tony Snow — when they published nonexistent factoids about the guy.

Whereupon he filed a civil lawsuit, which he won, based on a finding of fact according to which the factual statements made about the man were not, in fact, factual. He has never even met that goat, much less devoted his amorous attentions to it. That sort of thing.

“A imprensa e democracia, na vigente ordem constitucional brasileira, são irmãs siamesas. Por isso que, em nosso país, a liberdade de expressão é a maior expressão da liberdade, porquanto o que quer que seja pode ser dito por quem quer que seja”, afirmou o ministro Britto em sua decisão.

“The press and democracy, under the current constitutional order in Brazil, are Siamese twins. For that reason, in Brazil, freedom of expression is the most important of civil liberties, so that anything can be said by anyone,” Justice Britto said in his decision.

“Fire!” he screamed in the crowded theater, although there was none.

São Paulo Diary: Floodplain Rain is Pain for Train

No phone, no lights no motor cars,
Not a single luxury,
Like Robinson Crusoe,
As primitive as can be.
–“The Ballad of Gilligan’s Island”

Termina resgate de passageiros ilhados na Zona Sul de SP: “Stranded commuter train passengers rescued in Southern Zone of São Paulo.” G1/Globo gives the incident a bureaucratic reading.

If it were me, I might have led with the information that the rescue operation took nearly eight hours to complete.

In some parts of the city, 37% of the rain expected for the month fell last evening within less than half an hour, reports are.

There was a note on the weather report the other evening warning that a region of Rio Grande do Sul was likely to receive 100% of the rain expected for the month the following afternoon.

Start blowing up your inflatable kayaks now, gaúchos.

There is a wonderful word for ad hoc watercourses that can suddenly appear under such conditions: igarapé.

I was reading just now about the construction of the Transamazonian Highway in the 1960s, and how every day during the rainy season, igarapés would appear every afternoon, like the moving finger of Omar Khayyam, which, having written, moves on, to erase the day’s progress. At the end of the project, of 3,300 km of (unpaved) roadway planned, some 50 km were usable.

A operação de resgate de passageiros de um trem da Companhia Paulista de Trens Metropolitanos (CPTM), cuja composição ficou ilhada por causa da inundação da Linha D, na Zona Sul de São Paulo, terminou por volta de 2h40 desta sexta-feira (22). O Corpo de Bombeiros usou botes para retirar as pessoas.

The rescue operation to retrieve passengers from a São Paulo Metropolitan Rail Co. (CPTM) commuter train that was stranded by flooding on Line D in the Southern Zone of São Paulo, ended around 2:40 a.m. this Friday morning. The state fire brigade used boats to bring people out.

Is there a direct English equivalent for ilhar, which means, “to strand by surrounding with water?”

A assessoria da CPTM também confirmou que o corredor já foi liberado para circulação de trens.

The CPTM press office confirmed also that the corridor has now been cleared for the circulation of trains.

“From Beef on the Hoof To the Cruzado Crusade”: Reading Up on Tupi Biz Writers

Em terra de cruzeiro, quem tem dólar é rei, o que não é vantagem nenhuma em regime presidencialista. (In the land of the cruzeiro, the man with dollars is king … which in a presidentialist regime does him absolutely no good.) —O Grande Livro dos Pensamentos de Casseta e Planeta (Paraguyan edition, publication date unknown)

The Observatório da Imprensa ran this teaser for and excerpt from the preface of my latest bit of nightstand reading in 2005.

Introdução de Construtores do Jornalismo Econômico – da cotação do boi ao congelamento de preços, de José Venâncio de Resende, 416 pp., Ícone Editora, São Paulo, 2005; R$ 55

“An introduction to the journalists who built economic journalism in Brazil — from beef on the hoof to the price freeze,” by a Mr. Rezende (not, I take it, that fellow with the lugubrious moustache from the JB whom you see on TV all the time.) Fifty-five Brazilian bucks was a ton of money even at the time. I was very lucky to get it at the sebo (second-hand bookshop) for R$15.

I am reading a chapter on a gentleman named Geraldo Banas who introduced U.S.-style business journalism in (some sort of) partnership with McGraw-Hill and others in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Very sensible guy, reminds me a bit of Myron Kandel, who used to edit business for CNN. First to use an unhealthy obsession with balance-sheet analysis to produce reality-based prognostications on markets and sectors. The original “spreadsheet head,” as they say here.

I am just trying to learn such basic things as why I should care what Celso Ming says, for example. (A: The guy has been around the block more than a few times and often knows whereof he speaks.)

I liked what Ming said the other day: Just because a given government does not necessarily do much to improve economic conditions, we should never underestimate the value of its refraining from actions absolutely guaranteed to fuck the economy up. (I’m paraphrasing. Mr. Ming is actually a genteel and well-spoken writer.)

A man, for example, claims the Iraq war will pay for itself. He is wrong, and is rewarded for his error with the presidency of the World Bank. Rewarding acts of betting the farm on failed prognostications is not a management best practice. Case in point.

Este texto tem o propósito de apresentar um balanço do jornalismo econômico entre a década de 1930 e o Plano Cruzado, nos anos 80, com base principalmente em depoimentos de cerca de 60 profissionais que viveram e testemunharam o processo de construção dessa área especializada do jornalismo.

This study offers an overview of Brazilian economic journalism from the 1930s to the Cruzado Plan in the 1980s, mainly based on interviews with 60 journalists who lived through and witnessed the process of building this journalistic specialty (in Brazil).

Petrobras Flash: Laptop Cop Was a Gas, Gas, Gas?

NS-21: Who is going to wind up in deep shit over deep, dark deep-water data?

Detalhes sobre mega-reserva de gás estão entre dados furtados: The front page of the Estado’s Economy section yesterday was taken up by a three-story editorial package on the theft of laptops from a container being shipped back to Petrobras from an exploration platform that had just discovered what are reportedly massive fossil fuel reserves that will enable Brazil to pole-vault into a serious candidate for OPEC membership.

I have been very busy and not following the story closely, but it would be interested to collect all the clippings on the coverage.

Some TV news programs the other evening, for example, were very insistent that the theft of computer equipment during a break-in was a “common crime” and that “police had ruled out” industrial espionage.

If you just got your news from the TV Globo and TV Record screencrawl, that might very well be the impression you came away with.

The Estado has been notably insistent that jumping to this conclusion does not exactly fit the known factoids, which it has run down very diligently.

See also

• Brazil: Halliburton Boiled in Oil Over Shopped Laptops?

A very significant side issue dealt with in yesterday’s editorial package on the incident: Will the incident affect the auctioning off of concessions to pump Texas tea from the Tupi and Jupiter fields?

In other words, if someone is found to have been behind an industrial espionage scheme, could they lose out on bidding for the contract? Is Halliburton at risk of being blamed for apparently shoddy data security practices? People whose job it is to answer questions like this seem to be hemming and hawing on this one.

The latest dispatch:

MACAÉ, RJ – Os dados sigilosos que estavam nos computadores da empresa Halliburton e que foram furtados tinham sido coletados nos trabalhos de sonda de perfuração NS-21 conhecida também como Ocean Clipper, responsável pela descoberta gigante no campo de Jupiter, anunciada no mês passado. A informação de que os dados furtados são destas sondas foram levantadas pela investigação da Polícia Federal e já foram confirmadas em Macaé.O campo de Jupiter representa uma extensa reserva de gás natural da bacia de Campos e é a descoberta mais recente da Petrobras.

The secret data on the Halliburton computers that were stolen had been collected during test drilling by the NS-21 unit, known as the Ocean Clipper, which discovered the giant Jupiter field announced last month.

According to RigZone, a sort of Web-based Jane’s for floating heavy industrial equipment, the platform is owned and managed by Diamond Offshore (NYSE:DO).

Oh, wait, the Estado does get to that.

The information the data stolen comes from these soundings was raised by the federal police and has now been confirmed in Macaé, Rio de Janeiro. The Jupiter field represents a vast natural gas reserve in the Campos Basin and is the state-controlled oil company’s latest discovery.

Colombia: Mortal Monkey Business in the Marching Powder Sector

“Risk to upcoming elections, by municipality, presented by the presence of new groups, emergent gangs, remnants of demoblized paramilitaries, and structures in formation” (2007). See Infographic of the Week: Colombia’s Elections Observer Mission.

Guerra entre paramilitares estaría detrás de asesinato de hermano de El Alemán: “War among paramilitaries may have been behind the murder of The German’s brother.” EL TIEMPO (Bogotá) reports.

A follow-up to

• Colombia: “The Paramilitaries No Longer Exist, and We Continue Working to Eliminate Them”

In his allocution under the Justice and Peace process, Freddy “The German” Rendon, leader of the Bloque Élmer Cárdenas “self-defense” group, confessed 141 crimes, including massacres committed in Vietnam-style “destroy the village in order to save it” types of actions.

On the Justice and Peace process, see also The “Justice and Peace” process takes a grotesque turn (Plan Colombia and Beyond, June 24, 2007):

His hair in a ponytail and his shirt unbuttoned halfway to his navel, Freddy Rendón (”El Alemán“), whose Élmer Cárdenas Bloc dominated much of the violent Urabá region, also denied nearly all responsibility. St. Petersburg Times reporter David Adams was in Medellín during the trial; his account is a must-read.

In court, Rendon admitted only to ordering the assassination of a local mayor whom he accused of collaborating with the guerrillas. He also admitted to kidnapping and murdering four peasant leaders in Rio Sucio in late 1996. Other than that he was vague on details. “You can be certain that they are dead,” he told the court. “What I can’t be precise about is with how many bullets, two, or three or five.”

EL TIEMPO today:

Lázaro Rendón, que no tenía antecedentes criminales, fue sacado de su casa en Cáceres (Antioquia) por un grupo de 30 hombres encapuchados. Su muerte sería una venganza contra su familia.

Lázaro Rendón, who had no criminal record, was taken from his home in Cáceres, in Antioquia province, by a group of 30 hooded men. His death may have been an act of revenge against his familly.

Las primeras versiones que tienen los organismos de inteligencia señalan que el grupo, armado con fusiles, llegó preguntando por Daniel Rendón Herrera, ‘don Mario’, hermano de Freddy Rendón, el ‘Alemán’, ex paramilitar preso en la cárcel de Itagüí.

Initial information received by intelligence agencies is that the group, armed with assault rifles, arrived asking after Daniel “Don Mario” Rendón Herrera, brother of Freddy the German, who is doing time at the Itagüí prison. 

‘Don Mario’ se ha convertido en un nuevo poder en el mundo de la mafia y las bandas emergentes.

“Don Mario” has emerged as a new power in the world of the mafia and emerging [armed non-state actors.]

São Paulo Police Blotter: Colonel’s Widow Wonders About “Nickel-Hunter” Connection

Ângela. Source: Agência Estado, whose photojournalism work is notable for its aesthetic quality (sometimes opting for dramatic impact over conveying actual information, but often impressive noneheless).

Mulher de coronel morto liga PMs bandidos à máfia dos caça-níqueis: “Wife of murdered colonel ties [crooked cops] to gambling rackets,” is the headline in the Estado de S. Paulo today.

Let me just knock off a quick translation of the sidebar to this newsmaker interview, which summarizes the accusations made by the wife of the district patrol commander who was rubbed out execution-style last month. The Estado has made a point of covering the story intensively. Which I, for one, really appreciate.

Caça-níqueis: Ângela Bruno, mulher do coronel José Hermínio Rodrigues, morto em 16 de janeiro, diz que o fato de PMs subordinados a ele terem encontrado envelopes contendo R$ 27 mil, em 25 de maio do ano passado, com o advogado Jamil Chokr, colocou o comandante em risco. O dinheiro seria destinado ao pagamento de propinas da máfia dos caça-níqueis para 84 dos 93 Distritos Policiais de toda a capital

“Nickel-hunter” machines: Ângela Bruno, wife of Col. Hermínio, who was killed on January 16, says the fact that military policemen under his command found envelopes containing R$27,000 last May 25 in the possession of attorney Jamil Chokr, put the commander at risk. The money was allegedly destined for gambling racket payoffs to 84 of the 93 state judicial police precincts in the city.

“Nickel-hunter” machines are what they call yak in Mexico — one-armed bandits, videopoker, that sort of thing.

Corrupção: PMs da zona norte socorreram Chokr, na Marginal do Tietê, após fuga de uma tentativa frustrada de assalto. Além da lista com os DPs que receberiam propinas da máfia, também foram encontrados nomes de policiais em agendas e também no telefone celular de Chokr. O inquérito segue, mas até agora não houve nenhum indiciamento

Corruption: PMs from the Northern Zone stopped to help Chokr on the Tietê beltway after he fled from a failed armed robbery attempt. Besides the list of police precincts that were allegedly getting mafia bribes, the names of policemen were found in datebooks and on the cellular phone belonging to Chokr. The investigation continues but has as yet produced no indictments.

On the case of the Chokr shocker, see also

• São Paulo: Police Chief Inspector Borked on Mafia Charge
• São Paulo Police Blotter: Caça-Níquel Top Cops Borked!
• São Paulo: More Mafia Spreadsheets!

Execuções: além de uma possível ligação com o caso Chokr, a investigação de participação de PMs da zona norte em grupo de extermínio também pode ser uma das motivações para o assassinato do coronel. Morto com seis tiros de pistola 380, usada por policiais, ele levou chute no rosto por um homem que calçava coturnos pretos, também usados por PMs. Das 11 chacinas de 2007, oito foram na zona norte

Executions: Besides a possible link to the Chokr case, the investigation of PMs involved in a death squad in the region might also have motivated the assassination of the colonel. Killed with six bullets from a .380 pistol of the kind used by police, he was kicked in the face by a man wearing black combat boots, also of the type worn by military policemen. Of the 11 execution-style multiple slayings in São Paulo in 2007, 8 occurred in the Northern Zone.

I though it was 13?

Argentina: “The Butcher Borked for Sheep-Shear Snatch”

Pinochet and Vilela: Keeping the world safe for the orderly operation of free and open markets. Your tax dollars at work?

Un ministro del Interior de la dictadura argentina, detenido por secuestro: Minister of the interior of the Argentine dictatorship arrested for kidnapping, reports El País (Spain).

File provisionally under “RESOLVED: The hog heaven of the hard men is not really all that good for business.”

Albano Harguindeguy, quien fuera ministro del Interior durante la dictadura militar argentina, fue detenido este martes acusado del secuestro de dos empresarios en 1976, delito en el que también están presuntamente implicados el entonces jefe de la Junta Militar que perpetró el golpe de Estado, Jorge Rafael Videla, y el ministro de Economía José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz. La noticia fue celebrada por organismos de defensa de los derechos humanos que exigieron el esclarecimiento total del caso.

Albano Harguindeguy, minister of the interior during the military dictatorship in Argentina, was arrested on Tuesday and charged with kidnapping two businessmen in 1976, a crime in which the head of the military junta that carried out the coup, Vilela, and economy minister Martínez de Hoz, are also implicated. The news was celebrated by human right organizations, who have demanded a full accounting of the case.

Skipping some details of the conditions of the man’s imprisonment and getting to the alleged facts of the case.

En teoría, todo había comenzado cuando, durante un viaje, al ministro de Economía de la dictadura Martínez de Hoz se le hizo llegar el mensaje de que había un gran malestar en Hong Kong porque la empresa argentina Sadeco, propiedad de los Gutheim, no cerraba una operación. La entonces colonia británica era una puerta fundamental en el mercado algodonero. Pero en realidad era el propio Martínez de Hoz el más interesado en que se realizara la venta de algodón, ya que estaba implicado personalmente en la operación.

In theory, it all began when the minister of the economy, while traveling abroad, sent a message saying there was great dissatisfaction in Hong Kong because the Argentine company Sadeco, belonging to the Gutheim family, was not closing a deal. The then British crown colony was a vital port for the cotton industry. In reality, however, Martínez was more interested in getting the cotton sold because he had a personal stake in the deal.

El Gobierno militar decidió entonces presionar a los empresarios con todos los medios. Y así, padre e hijo fueron detenidos ilegalmente en noviembre de 1976 y no fueron liberados hasta abril de 1977.

The military government then decided to pressure the businessmen with all the means at their disposal. Thus, father and son were illegally imprisoned in November 1976 and not freed until April 1977.

En sus cinco meses de cautiverio fueron obligados a reunirse en Argentina con enviados comerciales llegados de Hong Kong para firmar el ansiado acuerdo.

During their five months in prison, there were forced to meet in Argentina with commercial representatives from Hong Kong to sign the desired deal.

Tupi Cops in Crisis: “Negligence by Government and Police Commanders”

… superior officers start supplying their subordinates as manpower for these illegal activities, that is, to work in their fictional “private security firms.” Because there is no oversight, these mafias get mixed up with the drug traffic and every other type of crime. This is the fertile ground that produced the militias of Rio and the death squads of São Paulo. 

“Há omissão do governo e do comando da PM”: The Estado de S. Paulo continues its series on the assassination of the state military police patrol commander for the Northern Zone here in São Paulo.

It has reported that the man was killed by a death squad operating out of the 18th Battalion and that ballistics show the weapon used was used in a drive-by execution last year, possibly requested as a personal favor by a ROTA sergeant living in the neighborhood.

The colonel who was killed reportedly tried to sack more than 50 policemen under his command over executions, protection rackets, bribe-taking, and the like.

The series moved to page C-6 of the Metrópole section yesterday, and featured this short interview with one of the authors of Elite da Tropa, the basis for the film on Rio’s BOPE that recently won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Festival.

Ex-secretário Nacional de Segurança Pública, co-autor do livro Elite da Tropa, atualmente passando uma temporada na Universidade de Harvard, onde participa de um modelo para auxiliar políticas públicas na área de segurança, o antropólogo Luiz Eduardo Soares, secretário de Prevenção da Violência de Nova Iguaçu, na Baixada Fluminense, concedeu entrevista ao Estado:

Former national public security secretary, co-author of Elite da Tropa, and currently spending a term at Harvard University, where he is helping to develop public policies in the area of public security, anthropologist Luiz Eduardo Soares, currently municipal secretary for violence prevention in Nova Iguaçu in the Baixada Fluminense [“downstate Rio”], gave an interview to the Estado: 

Qual a gravidade de um coronel pedir transferência por não se sentir respaldado para sanear as forças policiais que comanda?

How serious is it that a colonel asked for a transfer because he did not feel he had support for cleaning up the police forces he commanded?

É escandaloso, absurdo, inaceitável, e deveria ocupar as manchetes da mídia séria, comprometida com a legalidade. Essa transferência significa que profissionais decentes, dispostos a cumprir seu dever, estão sendo chantageados pela banda podre, ostensivamente, e que o acuamento está sendo, indiretamente, por omissão, chancelado pelos superiores, na PM, na secretaria, no governo. Em um país sério, isso seria um escândalo que exigiria imediata intervenção do governo e amplo repúdio social.

It’s scandalous, it’s absurd, it’s unacceptable, and ought to make headlines in any serious news organization that is committed to the democratic rule of law. This transfer means that decent professionals, with a desire to do their duty, are being blackmailed by the rotten element, openly, and that the situation is being ratified, tacitly, by omission, by his superiors in the military police, the secretary of public security (SSP), the government. In a serious country, this would be a scandal that would lead to direct government intervention and widespread repudation by society.

Badillo: Refco, Pemex and the Ghost of Jimmy Hoffa

White-collar perp walks: “The people like it that way.” Caros Amigos (Brazil)/NMM(-TV)SNB(B)CNN(P)BS (Brooklyn)

Girls gone wild, sure. But there’s more to today’s top spring break destinations than the brochure lets on. … Cancun city is also known for its history of drug trafficking. In 2001, federal agents arrested and charged Mario Villanueva, ex-governor of Cancun’s state Quintana Roo, with helping traffickers move more than 200 tons of cocaine through his state during the 1990s. The U.S. is working on his extradition. –“The Other Side of Paradise,” Michigan Daily, Jan. 24, 2008

But a new mafia, one involved in white-collar crimes, now threatens American society, even as it concerns itself more with Mexico’s problems than with its own. –Miguel Badillo

Oficio de Papel is the weekly Web column of Mexican journalist Miguel Badillo. He puts last week’s guilty plea from a top Refco executive in an interesting context.

I translate hastily, draft-quality, as always.

• Decomisa EU 18 mdd a Mario Villanueva
• Aseguran cuentas en NY por 1,100 mmd
• Corrupción corporativa y pública en EU

They seize $18 million from Mario Villaneuva; freeze $1.1 billion in New York; corporate and public corruption in the United States.

La reforma judicial se negocia en México, pero se aprobará con la anuencia del gobierno de Estados Unidos, pues no es una novedad que los cambios al sistema de justicia se diseñen en Washington. Documentos del Congreso estadounidense, que ya hemos citado en este espacio (17 de diciembre de 2007, Reforma Judicial Made in USA) dan cuenta de ello. Más de una decena de gobiernos estatales han recibido asesoría directa del Congreso, del Departamento de Justicia y, por supuesto, del Ejecutivo de ese país. Ufanos, los estadounidenses documentan que han sido ellos, nadie más, quienes impulsan los juicios orales; la única opción, dicen, para erradicar la corrupción que mina a muchos jueces que deciden, reprochan los estadounidenses, casi de manera personal si se libera o no a un narcotraficante.

Judicial reform is being negotiated in Mexico, but it only will be approved with the backing of the United States, because it is hardly news that changes in the Mexican justice system are designed in Washington. Documents from the U.S. Congress that we have previously cited in this column (December 17, 2007, “Judicial Reform Made in the USA) provide evidence of this. More than a dozen Mexican state governments have received direct advice from the U.S. Congress, the Justice Department, and, of course, from the White House. The arrogant Americans have documented the fact that it they who have driven [reform of the trial system]; it is the only way, they say, to eradicate the corruption that has affected many judges who rule, the Yankees charge, almost on a personal basis on whether or not to let a drug trafficker go free.

En Estados Unidos, sin embargo, las cifras y datos sobre el ritmo de las actividades ilícitas también ponen en tela de juicio la efectividad de su sistema judicial, pero sobre todo en la prevención de delitos. Con un gasto superior a los 65 mil millones de dólares en drogas, los estadounidenses exhiben una gran cantidad de delitos asociados al narcotráfico: corrupción gubernamental y corporativa, por ejemplo.

In the United States, however, the numbers and data on the incidence of crime call into question the efficiency of the nation’s own justice system, especially in the area of crime prevention. While spending more than $65 billion dollars on drugs [per year], Americans commit a lot of crimes associated with narcotrafficking: governmental and corporate crimes, for example.

Brazil: Cop Ultraviolence Flick Wins in Berlin

Urso de Ouro aumenta pressão sobre PM, diz “capitão Nascimento”: The real-life model for Capt. Nascimento in the filme Tropa de Elite says the Golden Bear the film received from the Berlin Film Festival will increase pressure on the Rio police, reports the Folha Online (Brazil) in an interview with the semiautobiographical novel on which it was based.

See also

• NMM(-TV)SNB(B)CNN(P)BS: Brazil’s “Tropa de Elite,” A Paraguayan Preview
• Brazil: “Colonel Criticizes Elite da Tropa”
• Rio: “The Trooper Elite Is an Antisocial Crime!”
• Brazil: ‘Tropa de Elite Tells it Like It Is”
• “São Paulo’s Trooper Elite”: The Estadão on ROTA
• We Actually Watch Elite de Tropa]

O Urso de Ouro conquistado por “Tropa de Elite” em Berlim no sábado, desbancando até mesmo o filme “Sangue Negro”, com oito indicações ao Oscar, fará com que organizações internacionais aumentem a pressão sobre a política de confronto da polícia do Rio de Janeiro, disse à Folha Online Rodrigo Pimentel, ex-capitão do Bope (Batalhão Operações Policiais Especiais) que inspirou o Capitão Nascimento, personagem principal do filme premiado.

The Golden Bear award won by Tropa de Elite on Saturday, defeating even There Will Be Blood, with its eight Oscar nominations, will cause international organizations to increase their pressure on the policy of armed confrontation of the Rio de Janeiro police, said Rodrigo Pimentel, formerly a captain in the Special Operations Battalion [BOPE] of the state military police, who inspired Capt. Nascimento, the principal character in the award-winning film.

I think he also gets a producer and screenwriting credit. Pimentel has done other film work, starting with the documentary Ónibus 174. You should rent that.

“O comando da Polícia Militar fluminense já avisou: nas operações para as obras do Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento (PAC) ocorrerem no Alemão, muita gente vai morrer. Só em 2007 a polícia do Rio matou 1.600 pessoas. E mudou alguma coisa? Há anos a gente sobe o morro, mata traficante, e nada muda. Com certeza, com a vitória em Berlim, a ‘guerra’ no Rio recebe repercussão internacional, e o governo terá de rever esta estratégia”, aponta Pimentel.

“The commanders of the Rio state military police has already warned that during operations in support of the economic development plant for the Complexo do Alemão, a lot of people are going to die. In 2007 alone the Rio police killed 1,600 people. And did anything change? For years now we go up the hillside, we kill drug traffickers, and nothing changes. Now, with the victory in Berlin, the ‘war’ in Rio will get international attention and the government will have to rethink this strategy,” Pimental says.

From the Annals of Maracutaia: Hard Time for Malufist Harvard MBA

Pitta: Veritas?

A Tarde (Salvador, Bahia, Brazil) reports: Former São Paulo mayor Celso Pitta (a Harvard MBA) has been sentenced to jail time.

A Justiça Federal condenou o ex-prefeito e ex-secretário das Finanças da Prefeitura de São Paulo, Celso Pitta, e o ex-coordenador municipal da dívida pública, Wagner Baptista Ramos, a quatro anos e quatro meses de prisão em regime semi-aberto.

A federal court sentenced former São Paulo mayor and municipal finance secretary Celso Pitta, along with former municipal debt coordinator Wagner Baptista Ramos, to four years and four months in prison.

Regime semi-aberto means, I think, that they can leave the prison during the day but must report back in at night.

Os dois foram condenados pelos crimes de desvio de verba pública e endividamento do município, no episódio que ficou conhecido como “escândalo dos precatórios”. A informação é da assessoria da Justiça Federal em São Paulo.

The two men were found guilty of embezzling public funds and debt, in an episode that came to be known as the “scandal of the [letters rogatory].” The report is from the press office of the federal judiciary in São Paulo.

De acordo com a denúncia do Ministério Público Federal, os dois inseriam declarações falsas em documentos públicos para justificar o pedido de emissão de títulos públicos no valor de US$ 600 milhões (cerca de R$ 1 bilhão) ao Senado Federal, com autorização do então prefeito Paulo Maluf. Os valores deveriam ser destinados ao pagamento de precatórios.

According to the indictment brought by the federal prosecutor [MPF], the two men inserted false statements into public documents in order to justify a request to the Federal Senate to issue of [municipal bonds] in the value of US$600 million (nearly R$1 billion), with the authorization of then mayor Paulo Maluf. The funds were to be used to pay off the letters rogatory.

São Paulo Diary: Bad Goodwill in Subway Supercharges?

In the wake of the Big Armadillo: The Line 3 (Green) extension to the São Paulo subway, has reportedly been less accident-prone than the accident-plagued Line 4 (Yellow) extension, one reads.

Metrô admite que há indícios de falha em licitações: “São Paulo transit authority admits there is evidence of faults in contracting process.” G1/Globo passes along the report from the network’s Jornal Nacional and Fantástico (which we generally do not watch.)

O Metrô de São Paulo admitiu nesta segunda-feira (18) que há indícios de superfaturamento nas licitações para compra de equipamentos mostradas domingo (17) pelo Fantástico. Funcionários da companhia são suspeitos de receber propina para ajudar uma empresa a ganhar as concorrências.

The metropolitan transport authority of São Paulo admitted on Monday (February 18) that there are indications of overcharging in the competitive bidding on equipment procurement contracts, as shown Sunday on Fantástico. Employees of the authority are suspected of receiving bribes to help a specific firm win the competition.

Suspected by whom?

Fantástico tends to just run any leaked scaled that comes its way without checking it out first. Typical example:

• NMM(-TV)SNB(B)CNN(P)BS: The Mengele of Milk! Notes On Brazilian Moral Panic Journalism

This story is based on an anonymous tipster.

O governador de São Paulo, José Serra (PSDB) disse que vai atuar com rigor. “A investigação está sendo feita onde há suspeita. Você não pode fazer investigação sobre tudo, independentemente de ter suspeição ou não. Onde tem suspeição a gente vai, investiga e atua duramente.”

São Paulo governor José Serra said he will act with severity. “The investigation is being conducted wherever there are suspicions.You cannot investigate everything, whether there is reason to investigate or not. Where there is a suspicion, you investigate and act firmly.”

O Metrô suspendeu a licitação de R$ 3 milhões que previa a substituição do sistema de combate a incêndio na Linha 1, inaugurada na década de 1970, que liga o bairro do Tucuruvi, na Zona Norte, ao Jabaquara, na Zona Sul.

The Metrô authority suspended competitive bidding on a R$3 million contract for replacing the firefighting system on Line 1, inaugurated in the 1970s, which connects Tucuruvi in the Northern Zone to Jabaquara in the Southern Zone.

Tucuruvi’s up and Jabaquara is down. The people ride in a hole in the ground. Sampa, Sampa …

São Paulo Polícia Bandida Case: The Skull and Crossbones “Consortium”

Extreme institutional message-control malfunction: ROTA gets a YouTube music video straight out of A Clockwork Orange. “If you run, ROTA will get you. If you don’t, ROTA will gun you down.” Source: G1/Globo.

PMs presos são suspeitos de fazer “consórcio” com a Rota para chacina; Grupo “decorou” interior de viatura com caveiras: “Military policeman arrested [in death-squad case] are suspected of forming a ‘consortium’ with ROTA to [commit multiple execution-style slaying]; group ‘decorated’ its squad car with skulls.”

With skulls, you say?

The Estado de S. Paulo daily continues to cover this story closely, and competently, and send it out over its Agência Estado newswire to the rest of Brazil. The ROTA connection, based on an anonymous source the Estado has been developing stories from for some time now, is new information.

(ROTA is an acronym for, roughly, the Tobias Aguiar Memorial Ostensive Patrol Unit. It was the subject of an 1992 book by Caco Barcellos titled something like “ROTA 66: São Paulo’s Killer Police.”) See also

• “São Paulo’s Trooper Elite”: The Estadão on ROTA

Dois dos sete policiais militares do 18º Batalhão presos desde o dia 25 por suspeita de ligação com execuções são investigados por outra chacina ocorrida na zona norte de São Paulo: a matança de seis pessoas no Jardim Elisa Maria, em 1º de fevereiro de 2007. Os suspeitos são dois sargentos que policiais civis do Departamento de Homicídios e Proteção à Pessoa (DHPP) e a Corregedoria da PM investigam desde 2007. A matança foi tão traumática na zona norte que levou o governo José Serra a escolher a região para desencadear a Virada Social, programa que busca aproximar a polícia da população.

Two of the seven military policemen from the 18th Battalion under arrest since January 25 on suspicion of involvement in summary executions are being investigated over another [execution-style multiple slaying] in the Northern Zone of São Paulo: The killing of six in Jardim Elisa Maria on February 1, 2007. The suspects are two sergeants whom the state police homicide bureau and military police internal affairs have been investigating since 2007. The slaying was so traumatic in the Northern District that it led Gov. Serra to choose the region for the Virada Social, a program designed to improve police-community relations.

The Virada Social — named after the Virada Cultural street festival of the lively arts — was not exactly billed as a peacekeeping operation when it first rolled out under the brand name of Operation Saturation.

See also

• São Paulo: Operation Saturation, Reloaded

Sampa Audits the Quango Tango and the GONGO Bongo

Frozen squid: The president of Brazil drinks guaraná in Antarctica. All the local football teams “disappoint.” Military police arrested for death-squading “suspected of running a murder-for-hire ‘consortium'” …

Time will tell whether the emergence of the quasi government is to be viewed as a symptom of decline in our democratic government, or a harbinger of a new, creative management era where the purportedly artificial barriers between the governmental and private sectors are breached as a matter of principle. — Kevin R. Kosar, “The Quasi Government: Hybrid Organizations with Both Government and Private Sector Legal Characteristics” (Congressional Research Service, February 13, 2007)

TCE faz devassa nos repasses do governo de São Paulo para ONGs: “State independent auditor [the Tribunal de Contas do Estado, or TCE] is poring over state government allocations to NGOs.”

A federal congressional inquiry into the public accountability of NGOs acting as outsourcing providers is generating very little noise and heat, but the issue actually seems like kind of a pressing one.

See

• Brazil: “Senate Opens NGO Probe”

The Estado de S. Paulo has this as its top Web story at the moment, while the lost Petrobras laptops lead the print coverage (above.)

Os repasses do governo de São Paulo para entidades do terceiro setor, como ONGs e Oscips, estão passando por um pente-fino do Tribunal de Contas do Estado. No ano passado, 1.891 processos foram abertos para investigar as transferências de recursos do governo estadual e das prefeituras para entidades sem fins lucrativos.

Allocations by the state government of São Paulo to the “third sector,” including NGOs and OSCIPS (“public-interest civil society organizations”) are being gone over with a fine-tooth comb by the state [independent auditor]. Last year, 1,891 proceedings were opened to investigate the passing of state and municipal funds to nonprofit organizations.

O motivo é o elevado número de denúncias de irregularidades na execução dos serviços. As suspeitas sobre as relações entre o dinheiro público e tais organizações tomaram corpo após a abertura da CPI das ONGs, no Congresso, em 2007.

The reason is the high volume of accusations of irregularities in the execution of service contracts. Suspicions about the relationship between public funds and these sorts of organization solidified after the federal congress installed a CPI to investigate NGOs in 2007.

Sudden bursts of efficiency of this type tend to cluster around election years.

Municipal elections are scheduled for later this year, and a rift seems to be forming in the governing PSDB between the former governor and the current one, both of them bald Toucans.

São Paulo Diary: On the Record, Mud, Blood, Flood

 

The competition between the 24-hour news channel of TV Globo (cable) and TV Record‘s RecordNews (free to air) has provoked a lot of comment here in Brazil. See

• Brazil: TV Globo, TV Record Exchange Nuclear Press Releases!

The Wall Street Journal has even dedicated a feature to the Tupi TV news wars.

But until now, the Mrs. and I have not had much of a chance to ask whether RecordNews is any good or not. It is watchable? Does it tell you what you need to know in order to survive your commute? We are starting to make it a morning ritual to watch a couple of segments from both São Paulo morning drive-time shows.

This morning, the two broadcasts were pretty much exactly the same: Exactly the same incidents reported on, treated exactly the same way. In a nearby semirural area, for example, a flash flood sweeps away a number of cars and deposits them several kilometers away. The two networks interview exactly the same disgusted but stoic and understandably slightly traumatized local resident.

It rained like the dickens last night and will probably rain like the dickens this evening as well. It tends to rain like the dickens here this time of year. This is good news for watchers of the region’s hydroelectric reserves and often very bad news for anyone who lives near a river or creek, in any sort of declivity, or on a steep hillside that has been stripped of vegetation in order to erect shanties.

What Globo had this morning that Record did not was the story of a 27-year-old São Paulo banker who apparently committed vehicular suicide on one of the local beltway highways yesterday.

Globo has the surveillance footage from the transit authority that shows the man pulling over to the shoulder, pausing for a few minutes, then pulling a 180 and starting to drive the wrong way down the marginal. After driving 4 km in this suicidal fashion, he eventually dies in a head-on collision with a truck.

Globo also had a facsimile of the man’s driver’s license. Provisional inference: Globo’s scoop probably derived from leak journalism, pure and simple — the fact that it has better connections at City Hall.

The Disbelief of Nassif: “Veja Fudge on Telecom Judge”

“Doubts must not be allowed to linger: The presiding justice of the STJ, Vidigal, is involved in cases that need to be clarified. CAPTION: Santiago, Chile: Travel to a seminar with expenses paid by Amil.” Source: Veja magazine.

O caso Edson Vidigal: As part of his series on how Veja magazine came to run an astonishingly crude hatchet-job in May 2006, based on a scandal-mongering “dossier” it had every reason to believe was as phony as a carton of Paraguayan “Marlboros,” Brazilian business journalist Luis Nassif has noted a number of related hatchet-jobs, in support of the thesis that a personal relationship between the magazine’s top editor and banker Daniel Dantas explains why it published so much gabbling nonsense on the subject.

In this case, Nassif says, it tried to do a hatchet-job on a federal judge who ruled against Dantas’ business interests.

Paulo Henrique Amorim also noted accusations that have been brought up in the Citi-Opportunity litigation in a New York federal court against the retired judge, a somewhat fawning interview with whom he ran in his Conversa Afiada Web column. See

• Manhattan Connection: “Dantas Must Prove Bribery of Judge”

Nassif has made a point of distancing himself from Amorim, who now does some work, I think, for the Globo-killer wannabe TV Record.

I am not that interested in what Amorim is doing these days, either. His attempt to bring criminal libel charges against Veja columnist Diogo “I am a Martyr” Mainardi was, I thought, something of a meaningless publicity stunt.

O segundo serviço de Veja foi a tentativa de “assassinato de reputação” do Ministro Edson Vidigal, presidente do Superior Tribunal de Justiça (STJ).

The second favor Veja did for banker Daniel Dantas was an attempted “character assassination” of Edson Vidigal, the presiding justice of the STJ.

Hierarchically, this federal court is comparable to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, I guess you could roughly say.

A matéria vinha com uma manchete dúbia: “Não pode pairar a dúvida. O presidente do STJ é envolvido em casos que precisam ser esclarecidos”.

The article sported a dubious headline: “Doubts cannot be allowed to linger. The presiding justice of the STJ is involved in cases that need to be clarified.”

Era uma matéria exemplar para se entender como fabricar um escândalo sem crime. A matéria não enfocava uma suspeita específica. Havia um estoque de fatos relacionados a Vidigal – o que demonstrava, nitidamente, que se tratava de um dossiê especialmente preparado contra ele.

This article is a perfect example of how to create scandalous smoke where there is no criminal fire.