Source: Jornal União - Londrina / PR - 08/10/2010

Piracy generates approximately US $ 520 billion annually in Brazil, against US $ 360 billion, which is handled, on average, by drug trafficking. Piracy also finances a series of other serious crimes, such as money laundering, arms trafficking and drug trafficking itself, in addition to preventing foreign investments, affecting the labor market, causing significant losses to national industry and compromising tax collection. tax. In view of this situation, the National Council to Combat Piracy and Crimes against Intellectual Property (CNCP), an organ linked to the Ministry of Justice that brings together representatives of the Public Power and civil society, launched yesterday (7), in the auditorium of the Ministry's headquarters Público do Paraná, in Curitiba, the strategic project “Cidade Livre da Pirataria”. The initiative includes a pioneer in Curitiba and should soon be implemented in Brasília and also in São Paulo, joining efforts by the Union, the State and the Municipality itself, with incentives for the creation of local mechanisms for the prevention and repression of illicit activity.

A training seminar, throughout Thursday, was the first practical movement of the project, aimed at members of the civil and military police, health and urban professionals from the State and the Municipality, members and public prosecutors. , among other segments. The executive secretary of the National Council for Combating Piracy (CNCP), Ana Lúcia de Moraes Gomes, opened the seminar to present an overview of the fight against piracy in Brazil. According to her, criminal practices in this area have become extraordinarily sophisticated, and if before they were limited to products such as CDs and DVDs, for example, today virtually everything that can generate profits is subject to piracy: medicines, condoms, surgical materials and prostheses, pieces of automobiles and aircraft, cleaning and hygiene products, clothing, food. Faced with this complex situation, aggravated by the country's continental dimension, which has a dry border with ten other countries, it defends coordinated actions around three aspects: the repressive, directed against the supply of products; educational, aimed at developing campaigns that show the harm of illicit practice to the population; and economical, in the sense of making original products cheaper and more accessible to the consumer. “It is essential to awaken the population to conscious and responsible consumption; awaken reflection on the advantages of opting for an authentic product, manufactured and marketed legally ”, he highlighted.

Antônio Borges, from the Antipiracy Association of Cinema and Music (APCM) participated in the seminar talking about the piracy of musical and audiovisual works, a sector in which crime moves approximately R $ 40 billion a year. According to him, in the area of ​​films, in Brazil, piracy dominates 59% of the market, that is, of every 100 DVDs sold, about 60 are counterfeit, generating losses of the order of US $ 198 million. The picture is even more serious when it comes to music, since piracy accounts for no less than 65% of the market. "The situation is even more compromised if we consider the big and very current problem of cyber piracy," he added.

Representative of the intelligence sector of the National Health Surveillance Agency (ANVISA), Lorilei de Fátima Wzorek made a detailed presentation on the problem of counterfeit drug brands, presenting ANVISA's experience in combating counterfeiting of products subject to health surveillance - medicines, prostheses, food, cosmetics, among others. According to her, there has been a very considerable migration of drug trafficking to the area of ​​counterfeit drugs, and figures raised by Interpol in 2009 leave no doubt as to the reason for the criminals' choices: one kilo of heroin is equivalent in the market , to $ 3, while a kilo of counterfeit Viagra is equivalent to $ 75. The drugs aimed at treating erectile dysfunction, by the way, are among the most counterfeited today, alongside anabolic steroids and weight-loss drugs. According to Lorilei, they are sold in the formal market, in pharmacies and drugstores, and also in the informal market, by street vendors, in gyms, open markets and on the internet. In order to have a dimension of the problem, in terms of scale, the ANVISA expert recalls that in 2007 there were 620 seizures of counterfeit and smuggled drugs. In 2010, from January to September, the seizures were 53.575, a number slightly higher than that corresponding to the entire year of 2009 (when there were 53.535 seizures).

Agreement between the MP and the Pharmacy Council

During the seminar, an agreement was signed between the Public Ministry of Paraná, represented by the Attorney General of Justice, Olympio de Sá Sotto Maior Neto, and by the Regional Pharmacy Council, chaired by Marisol Dominguez Muro. The commitment aims to provide the Public Prosecutor's Office with technical and scientific advice on activities that require the assumption of technical responsibility, to instruct legal proceedings or administrative procedures involving the Public Prosecutor. On the other hand, the agreement must provide the Pharmacy Council with support from the members of the MP-PR, notably in the inspection actions aimed at investigating, in particular, the violation of rights related to the consumer or health - as in the case of the sale of counterfeit drugs and smuggled, for example.

(Luiz Alberto Pena / Asimp / MP-PR)