By Josette Goulart From São Paulo, Valor Econômico - 04/08/2005

The President of the Superior Court of Justice (STJ), Minister Edson Vidigal, will present at the end of the week the project for the creation of 400 new federal courts in the country in up to eight years to the Federal Justice Council (CJF). The project, which previously foresaw the creation of four thousand new rods, was reduced to become more realistic, according to the minister. The objective is to internalize the Federal Justice and specialize new courts in crimes of money laundering and piracy (see article below). "We need to internalize the federal judiciary, as we have information that criminal groups are moving to these regions," said the minister

The novelty proposed by the minister is that the National Congress indicates only 160 cities where the new units of the Federal Justice should be installed, the rest being chosen by technical criteria defined by the STJ itself, which will identify the demand for federal courts in certain regions . In the last project approved by Congress, as the CJF did not define the regions in which the new rods should be installed, parliamentarians ended up deciding themselves where to create the new units.

An example of a city that needs a Federal Justice unit is the municipality of Cruzeiro do Sul, on the borders of the Brazilian border in Acre, where there is already a strong demand for a court specialized in crimes. "The council carried out a study in which it identified 240 cities as viable for the construction of the poles," said Vidigal.

This year alone, the Federal Court won 183 new rods and they will all be installed by the end of December, according to Vidigal. This is because the installation of these courts was established by the Budgetary Guidelines Law and more than R $ 165 million were sent to the Federal Court for the project to be put into practice.

Today the number of federal courts is around 900 and with the new project the idea is to create 50 new federal courts per year. If the CJF approves the project, it will be sent to the National Congress. Vidigal says that deputies and senators, who will nominate 100 and 60 municipalities, respectively, have every interest in approving the project later this year. "Next year is an election year and it is much better to present to the population what has already been done," said the minister. "And the people today want justice."