O Globo - 11/10/2004
By Antônio Werneck and Carla Rocha

The state prosecutor's office is conducting a raid on Feema. Of the 45 arrested during the operation Poeira no Asfalto, carried out by the Federal Police on Monday against the fuel mafia, three would be employees of the state agency or would be serving him. That is why, on Tuesday, a group of three prosecutors began to search the company's documents, in an operation carried out at the institution's headquarters in Copacabana. Twenty cases involving 20 companies, gas stations and fuel distributors, suspected of having obtained a fraudulent environmental license, were collected in the presidency room.

Prosecutors collected the files they found on the spot concerning companies cited at some point in the Federal Police's more than 200 hours of recording. The documents collected by the PF, on Monday, and by the Public Ministry will have to be examined.

Licenses may be canceled

The reports of the Public Prosecutor's Office will be delivered to the Criminal Counsel of the agency to identify the crimes that may be associated with the complaint. Yesterday afternoon, prosecutors went to Feema units in the interior of the state to carry out other search and seizure warrants. Investigations will be carried out by promoters of the Environment and Citizenship Defense. The accused employees must answer for administrative impropriety.

Regarding the denunciation of the participation of environmental inspectors in the Feema scheme, which would have a kind of price list to release processes of irregular environmental licenses to gas stations faster, the Secretariat of Environment issued a note stating that it determined the opening of a administrative inquiry. ? The State Secretary for Environment and Urban Development, Isaura Fraga, and the president of the State Foundation for Environmental Engineering (Feema), Elizabeth Lima, report that an administrative inquiry has already been opened, requesting temporary removal of the two employees of the foundation, allegedly involved with the tampering gang and irregular fuel transportation ?.

Also according to official information from Feema and the secretariat, all licenses mentioned in the survey and those in which employees under suspicion may have had some participation will be audited. If any irregularities are found, they will be canceled or reassessed.

According to the ongoing investigation by the Federal Police, about 40 to 50 companies are mentioned in recorded telephone conversations. As prosecutors have not yet located all the lawsuits of the companies mentioned, searches should continue to be made at Feema in the coming days.

? Did Feema become a notary, the DMV from long ago? says a source linked to the environmental area, asking not to be identified, but remembering that in recent years several isolated complaints have been made against Feema for the collection of environmental licenses.

Several Feema employees with senior positions are cited in conversations recorded by the Federal Police, which investigates the fraud. The businessman and parliamentary advisor of state deputy Domingos Brazão (PMDB) Renan de Macedo Leite, 40, Bam-Bam, arrested by the feds, arrives, in one of the sections, to boast of his power over the environmental agency. Owner of gas stations and a fuel distributor, he says on the tapes that he could get anything.
? Do I rule at Feema? would have said in conversations with friends that they were bugged.

To install a gas station in Macaé with a natural gas pump, Renan, according to the PF, paid about R $ 10 for the license to Feema's inspectors. The bribe was considered necessary by him, in the recorded dialogues even with politicians from Rio de Janeiro, because city officials would also own posts in the places and resisted the installation because of competition.

According to the Federal Police, one of Renan's schemes involved 30-year-old truck driver Sandro Almeida Domingues. Employee of the city of Duque de Caxias, but transferred to Feema, he pretended to be an inspector of the agency, using a fake wallet. In this way, he would command a network of inspectors and highway patrolmen who extort businessmen from the fuel sector. However, in yesterday's note, Feema assures that Sandro is not part of the company's staff and was never assigned, as has been disclosed.

But it is not what is being investigated by federal agents. One of the modalities of the group that would be headed by Sandro would be to wait for trucks with fuel to leave the Manguinhos Refinery. Did he warn the patrolmen? almost always called Claudio da Costa Narciso? that held the truck.

After the patrolmen arrived, Sandro appeared and, together with the patrolmen, demanded bribes to release the trucks. Narcissus is also in prison.