Why Brazil can beat corruption
Author: Wálter Nunes
Source: Season, 16/03/2008
Decline, debauchery and indecency. the words most used by dictionaries
to define corruption involve an uncomfortable type of moral decay. Researches
Recent studies show that corruption is the main source of shame for
Brazilians, above violence and poverty. This great villain is even more
nefarious for helping to perpetuate misery and crime. With corruption,
personal interests overlap with collectives. The common good gives way to
illicit enrichment of the few.
International experiences show that fighting corruption is the first
step to contain organized crime and also to create solid institutions in
all countries. It is a fact that Brazil has made progress in this field. Since the Constitution
1988, prosecutors can act independently
in the inspection of politicians and civil servants. Congress also has
ample freedom to investigate the government. There are bodies active in the inspection
public accounts, such as the Federal Comptroller General (CGU) or the courts
of bills. We have already called parliamentarians, governors, mayors and even a
president - Fernando Collor, who was impeached.
This institutional advance occurs gradually. As the complaints
illuminate the underworld of state politics and bureaucracy, the discovery of new
loopholes for corruption allows to further improve the institutions. In this
first edition of ÉPOCA Debate, we seek to understand how Brazil has advanced
in the fight against corruption and what remains for the country to overcome this
secular problem.
Investigating, identifying and arresting suspects is the first step in
fighting the corrupt
The greatest novelty in recent years in the fight against the corrupt has been the
Federal police. With raucous name operations - like Grasshopper, Gato de
Boots, Trojan Horse, Leech or Razor–, the PF was the institution that most
advanced in the fight against corruption. Between 2003 and 2006,
criminal organizations that moved more than R $ 50 billion and made the country
losing, in money diversion and tax evasion, more than R $ 18 billion, the
equivalent to the annual budget of the State of Paraná. In many cases, PF was
accused of exaggerating and turning its operations into spectacles
television. But the institutional leap is indisputable. “We broke with inertia
of the citizen's imagination. Today, everyone is aware that they can be
achieved by the State ”, says the director general of the PF, Luiz Fernando Corrêa.
Schemes of embezzlement of public money, previously considered an inherent aspect of the
state bureaucracy, began to be investigated, denounced and dismantled, without
save businessmen, judges or politicians.
The portrait of impunity
Investigating, identifying and arresting suspects is, however, only the first link
of the current to combat the corrupt. Condemning them to severe penalties in court is the
next step - and this is where Brazil has failed. This is what shows the
most complete survey ever conducted in the country on the investigations of the
Federal Police in recent years. For three months, ÉPOCA researched, one to
one, all 292 operations carried out by the Federal Police between June 2003
and December 2006. Of these, 216 referred to corruption cases, with the
involvement of public agents and agencies (these are the cases presented in the
table that runs through the next pages). The survey did not include the
operations carried out since 2007 - the criterion was to ascertain only the
operations with sufficient time interval so that the processes in Justice
at least reach the end of the trial at first instance. To measure the
result of PF operations, the report interviewed more than a hundred
delegates, prosecutors and judges involved in these actions. Decanted each
inquiry delivered by the PF to the Public Prosecutor's Office and the complaints sent to
the courts of justice. The objective was to find out how many prisoners were, after all,
effectively convicted and punished with jail. The conclusions were as follows:
following:
* in the 216 operations, the Federal Police arrested 3.712 people for
inquiry
* among them, there were 1.098 civil servants (107 from the PF itself)
* only 432, or 11%, had been convicted by the court in the first instance
instance until the end of last year
* of those convicted, only 265 were actually serving prison terms until the end
last year - 7% of all those arrested.
Translation: of every one hundred suspects detained by the police, only seven ended up in
jail. These figures reveal the inefficiency of justice to punish quickly.
They suggest that Brazil, in the fight against corruption, lives the classic situation of
half full glass: it is half full, but also half empty. We move forward,
truth. But not enough to defeat the main driver of corruption: the
impunity. When only seven out of every hundred suspected corruption go to
jail, it is difficult for a corrupt person to imagine that he could be punished for
their crimes.
Brazil loses 5% of GDP every year because of corruption, according to
a study by FGV
“The certainty of punishment is what reduces crime, and not a penalty more or less
tough ”, says political scientist Maria Tereza Sadek, professor at the University
of São Paulo (USP) and one of the greatest Brazilian specialists in Justice
(click here and read the interview). “Deviant behaviors are encouraged
if people are not sure they will be punished. ”
The fight against corruption in Brazil recalls the Greek myth of Sisyphus. By offending
gods, Sisyphus had been condemned to push a rock up the mountain. When
it reached the top, the stone rolled down the mountain. Sisyphus needed, then,
redo all the work. If justice fails to punish the corrupt, if it is the
prevailing impunity, the country is always, like Sisyphus, pushing stones
mountains up in a useless effort.
The first effect of impunity is the moral laxity that befalls the
society. Brazilians have become accustomed to associating corruption with the diversion of
public funds. But she is more than that. It goes from the “little gift” that the company
offers the public official even the purchase of judgments in the Judiciary. And the
bribes that gangs pay inspectors to extract and smuggle wood
illegally; the bribe of the street cop who turns a blind eye to prostitution
child and drug trafficking; the “goodwill” paid to the driving school to take the
driver's license without taking exam. Away from the big scandals that win
the media spotlight, corruption spreads anonymously in retail. To
incorporating bribery as inevitable - thanks to the feeling of impunity - the country
incurs veiled self-sabotage. The inspector who lets goods in
pirated products from China allows unfair competition to Brazilian industry. THE
public official who diverts a batch of vaccines exposes people to the risk of
die. Where there is a corrupt public servant, the State loses efficiency, the
population ceases to be served as it deserves and crime is strengthened.
All of this has an economic cost. Brazil loses, every year, the equivalent of
5% of GDP, or R $ 130 billion, because of corruption, according to calculations by the
economist Marcos Fernandes, professor at Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV), from São
Paulo. “The cost of corruption is not just the value of money drained from power
public and individuals ”, says Fernandes. “The serious problem with impunity is that
it is a symptom of legal uncertainty. ” Legal certainty - a set of
clear and stable rules that everyone trusts - brings investment, growth,
jobs, innovation and technology diffusion. Corruption worsens indicators
because it withdraws money from security, health and education, contributes
maintenance of the tax burden and reduces the competitiveness of the economy. In
According to Fernandes' studies, Brazil's GDP could grow up to 2 points
percentages more every year, if it weren't for corruption. Because of the
impunity, the Brazilian economy behaves like a train that moves more slowly
than it could because one of its wheels is off the rails.
What to do to prevent Brazil from continuing to carry the stones of
corruption up the mountains, only to see them fall soon after? THE
experience in other countries teaches that one of the most efficient ways to
inhibiting corruption is making government actions more transparent. Lack of
information is an ally of corrupt businesses. The secret, in this case, is called
Internet. In Brazil, in recent years, some websites have been developed that
allow detailed tracking of government spending,
expenses and revenues from election campaigns and even declarations of
elected parliamentarians. The best known are the Transparency Portal, the
federal government, the website of the Superior Electoral Court and the Excellencies Project,
maintained by the NGO Transparência Brasil. They all contain information that,
strictly speaking, have been public for many years, but they were inscrutable,
hidden in electoral registries or government bins.
Transparency tends to inhibit the corrupt. How data can be
tracked, it’s dangerous to steal
The idea behind using the internet as a tool to fight corruption is
allow each citizen to be a potential inspector. It is an understanding each
increasingly common in developed democracies. Control bodies do not have
conditions to look at everything. They work by sampling or from complaints
they receive. By giving full transparency to public information, websites
allow anyone to check something that looks strange, the amount and the
quality of complaints increases. Corruption, therefore, decreases. There is,
a second positive factor in the disclosure of public data on the internet: the
Transparency inhibits the initiative of the corrupt. How data can be
tracked, it becomes increasingly risky to steal.
Greater progress, however, will only be possible with a shock of management and
quality in the performance of the Judiciary and the institutions involved in combating
corruption. The work of these bodies, in many cases, is not usually
coordinated. The Comptroller General of the Union, the Activities Control Council
(Coaf) and the courts of auditors have little connection with the PF and the
Public ministry. Police and prosecutors engage in aggressive disputes
command of investigations. And the two have differences with the Justice. When
these disputes are overcome, good results appear.
$ 18 billion(1)
This is the damage that the federal government,
States and municipalities had gangs arrested by the PF between 2003 and 2006.
The main crimes were embezzlement and tax evasion
$ 50 billion
It was what the gangs arrested by the PF
moved until they were caught
The Federal Police seized R $ 298,7 million in jewelry,
gems and cash (cash, checks, traveler's checks and government bonds)
carrier)
The importance of good management is the main lesson of the positive example of
Federal police. Increasing PF productivity in combating corruption is
result of massive investment in human resources, technology and management. In
2003, the first year of the Lula government, to date, the PF budget has grown from R $
1,8 billion to R $ 3,5 billion per year. The number of employees increased with the hiring of
almost 3 new agents, delegates and experts. To attract more professionals
qualified workers, compensation has been improved. The starting salary for delegates,
much lower than that of prosecutors and judges, it went from R $ 8.300, in
2003, to R $ 12.900. These improvements were accompanied by greater autonomy in
investigations. Then commanded by delegate Paulo Lacerda, today at the head of
Brazilian Intelligence Agency (Abin), the PF invested more than US $ 35 million
in the purchase of equipment for expertise, a large part of which is imported from
outside. Two buildings were constructed to accommodate the National Institute of
Criminalistics of Brasília. Laboratories have been set up or expanded to
chemical, genetic, ballistics and image and sound analysis. THE
production capacity for analysis and expert reports increased by 300%, according to
the PF. With the larger and better prepared staff, the PF also changed
the working method of its agents. Before, the effort was concentrated on
investigating and arresting suspects. Now, the focus has become disarticular
entire gangs.
In order to untie the knot of impunity, the improvement of management has to be
within the Judiciary, as recognized by the associations of
magistrates and judges. In a study produced with the World Bank, the Association of
Brazilian Magistrates (AMB) places increased efficiency as the main
challenge to overcome the crisis in Justice. “Judges lack training
administrator. Judges' competitions require candidates to have knowledge of
Law, but no Administration ”, says Rodrigo Collaço, former president of AMB.
This bacharelic culture, prevalent until now, is one of the causes of
impunity, as the next report shows.
