OAB, one of the 40 meeting participants at Fiesp, will closely monitor operations and propose judicial measures against excesses

By Paula Pulitim and Laura Diniz, O Estado de S. Paulo - 19/07/2005

“Contrary voice”
Interview with ETCO executive president, Emerson Kapaz, at the meeting at Fiesp headquarters
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It was launched yesterday, with the participation of about 40 business, union and civil society entities, the Movement for Legality, against Arbitration and Corruption. The group, led by the Federation of Industries of the State of São Paulo (Fiesp) and by the São Paulo section of the Brazilian Bar Association (OAB-SP), promised to closely monitor the Federal Police's mega-operations. But in the manifest released yesterday he makes no mention of Operation Narcissus and the arrest of Daslu's owner, Eliana Tranchesi, on Wednesday.

The organizers claimed that the idea is to give the movement a long-term character. There are no concrete measures yet. According to the president of OAB-SP, Luiz Flávio Borges D'Urso, the group will “defend investigations and institutions and, when there are excesses, they will be repudiated even with judicial measures”. This will be the focus of the defense of legality. “In the field of arbitrariness, you know how it starts, but you never know how it ends. Brazilians must be considered innocent until proven otherwise, ”said Fiesp president Paulo Skaf.

In response, the Ministry of Justice stated, in a note with explicit mention of the operation, that the PF's actions follow the "rigor of the law", in an "impersonal and republican way, without protecting or pursuing investigated individuals".

Skaf reiterated several times yesterday that the movement is not linked to the Daslu case. “Do you think that the Central Geral dos Trabalhadores, which is part of the movement, is very concerned with Daslu? It is much broader. ” According to him, his hearing with the Minister of Justice, Márcio Thomaz Bastos, scheduled for Friday and canceled by Fiesp, had been requested two weeks before Operation Narcissus.

"What we have seen is not discreet, not even in proportion," said Skaf, regarding a recent ordinance in which the minister ordered the PF to make the operations discreet. "Anyone who thinks he has suffered moral or material damage can claim compensation." The owner of Daslu already thinks about suing the Union.

The president of the Brazilian Institute of Ethics in Competition (Etco), Emerson Kapaz, who was at Fiesp, said that the concern with legality is valid, but actions against tax evasion cannot be discouraged. "We have historically seen a certain accommodation, especially by the elites, about situations considered normal, but illegal."

The president of the São Paulo Association of the Public Ministry, João Antônio Garreta Prats, said that the PF's actions in Daslu and Schincariol - in which 68 company employees were arrested in June - are legal, but they cannot become media shows. "People are abhorred and in the end they don't even stay in prison."