Published in Jornal do Brasil Online - 14/10/2004

Almost half of Lula's job target could have been reached this year - 4,5 million vacancies, not opened for guilty piracy. The scary data was revealed yesterday by Orlando Diniz, president of Fecomércio-RJ. It is a projection based on a survey by the Union of Tax Inspectors of Finance, which estimated that Brazil, in 2002, failed to collect US $ 10 million in taxes and to generate 1,5 million new formal jobs due to smuggling. This year, the collection gap will be US $ 30 million. Diniz compared the escalation of piracy and smuggling to that of drug trafficking:

-Informatics, toys and fabrics have annual losses of US $ 15 billion. In the CD market, Brazil ranks second, with 70% of pirated sales. It was life-threatening, with counterfeit medicines and auto parts. The spurious union of powerful international criminal groups with national criminals takes on dangerous proportions, as happened with drug trafficking, which started in the periphery, climbed up to refined environments and today faces public security and affronts society at any time and without fear. The symbiosis of piracy and drug trafficking, already identified by police intelligence, is a new binomial of evil.

Educational campaign, reduction of the vulnerability of ports, airports and borders and improvement of the legislation were suggested by the speakers, among them Emerson Kapaz, former combatant of the cause through his Institute of Competitive Ethics. The businessman suggested and the government took, through a Provisional Measure issued on October 1, the creation of a National Council, composed of ministries, federal and highway police and representatives of society. The Ministry of Justice only needs to regulate its operation by decree so that it starts to work.

With José Fonseca Filho and Luciana Rangel