Source: São Paulo City Hall - 01/12/2009

The City of São Paulo, the Ministry of Justice and the Brazilian Institute of Ethical Competition (ETCO) signed this Tuesday (1/12) an agreement to implement the “Free City of Piracy and Illegal Trade” program in São Paulo, the first city ​​to welcome you in Brazil. The signature was made by the mayor of São Paulo and the executive secretary of the Ministry of Justice, Luiz Paulo Barreto, at the City Hall.

“If there is anything harmful to cities, it is illegal trade. Millions of jobs are not generated and billions of dollars in taxes are not collected. With this agreement, now, we have the action together with the Justice, the legal issue changes ”, affirmed the mayor, who explained that the agreement favors from the integrated action of the municipal and federal inspection bodies to the change of federal laws to facilitate the seizure of illegal material.

The initiative provides incentives to city halls to suppress crimes of piracy and regularize traders, so that they start offering the population only original products. In addition to a more rigorous inspection, the program will also have an educational character: the idea is for educators to pass on information about combating piracy to students in municipal schools.

The agreement also makes it easier for the City to discuss and propose changes to laws - mostly federal ones - against irregular trade. The mayor asked Secretary Barreto to consider proposing a law that speeds up the loss of material that is proven to be irregular by criminals, similar to what is already happening in the state, with irregular gasoline caught at the pumps. The so-called Law of Forfeiture was passed by the Legislative Assembly in 2007 as part of the fight against adulterated fuel.

For the executive secretary of the Ministry of Justice, Luiz Paulo Barreto, the idea is precisely that the ministry can use the know-how of the City in actions to combat illegal trade, and which are the most effective and how they can be improved . “The idea is to take this experience that São Paulo already has [in the fight against piracy]. It makes me happy that the City of São Paulo is the first partner in the program, ”said Barreto.

The executive secretary highlighted the MEIs project, which encourages the regularization of about 700 thousand people who are in the informal sector, launched 10 days ago by the mayor, as a good example to be followed. “MEI is a project that tries to bring the street vendor from illegality to formality in a way that everyone wins. We are going to take this project from the São Paulo City Hall to other cities in Brazil, ”he said.

According to Barreto, piracy and the trade in illegal products generate US $ 560 billion a year in the world, against US $ 360 billion for drug trafficking.