Moro needs to talk about Bolsonaro's wiretappers.

By Moisés Mendes, from Journalists for Democracy - Even before the start of the government, Sergio Moro was mentioned in 10 out of 10 observations about the threat of Bolsonaro taking over the state apparatus.

The former judge was allegedly the hand-picked subordinate, chosen based on his history in Lava Jato, to handle the snooping within Bolsonaro's inner circle.

It could be Moro's task to assemble the structure of a political police force, as a parallel support to the area that officially handles intelligence.

Moro had control of the COAF (Council for Financial Activities Control) and the Federal Police structures within the Ministry of Justice. If he wanted to, he could have accessed information important to the government and Bolsonaro's family.

But few knew of the existence of this Seopi, the Secretariat of Integrated Operations, which now appears as a producer of dossiers against enemies of the government. And therein may lie the explanation for part of the mission that should have been undertaken by the former judge.

Seopi is presented in Report by journalist Rubens Valente, from UOL., regarding the covert operations that resulted in the identification in June of 579 federal and state employees, all from the security sector, whom the government considers dangerous anti-fascist militants.

The enemies denounced in the dossier, Valente recounts, are civil and military police officers, prison guards, highway patrol officers, forensic experts, fingerprint technicians, clerks, firefighters, and municipal guards, both retired and active.

The government is monitoring, to an unknown extent, the opinions and movements (and lives?) of these people. Their names are now circulating within the Presidential Palace on lists of people who deserve attention.

Seopi is part of the government's intelligence structure, but it wasn't always. It was a coordinating body and gained the status of a secretariat with Moro's arrival.

This next detail is interesting. The coordinating body primarily worked on investigations in the states concerning crimes such as child pornography, pedophilia, and sexual exploitation. It provided support to the actions of state police forces and its tasks were overseen by the judiciary.

Rubens Valente recounts that Moro arrived and, through presidential decree 9662 of January 2019, transformed the coordination office into a secretariat.

The agency will advise the minister "on intelligence activities and police operations, focusing on integration with federal, state, municipal, and district public security agencies."

And the department can also "encourage and induce the investigation of criminal offenses, in an integrated and uniform manner with the federal and civil police."

The practical result, as seen in the dossiers completed in June, all containing the names and portraits of the enemies, is the transformation of Seopi into a political police force operating outside the control of the Justice system.

In addition to the anti-fascist police officers, the dossier to which Valente had access includes the names of university professors Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro (member of the Arns Commission on Human Rights, president of the UN independent international commission on the Syrian Arab Republic since 2011, based in Geneva, appointed by the UN Human Rights Council, former national secretary of human rights in the FHC government and former member of the Truth Commission); Luiz Eduardo Soares (political scientist, national secretary of Public Security in Lula's first government and co-author of the book "Elite da Tropa" [Objetiva, 2006]); and Ricardo Balestreri (state secretary of Citizen Articulation of the government of Pará and former president of Amnesty International in Brazil). There is also a fourth name from academia, Alex Agra Ramos, a graduate in political science from Bahia.

Bolsonaro and Moro disagreed over control of the Federal Police and intelligence information. It's clear that Moro resigned because he couldn't meet Bolsonaro's demands, who was always obsessed with the work of wiretappers. Moro may have chickened out.

It is rumored that the former judge is writing a book, with the help of his wife, lawyer Rosângela Moro, about his time in government. Given the talk of Bolsonaro's dealings with people in the Federal Police, Moro is unlikely to hide what he knows about the actions of the SEOP (Special Secretariat for Institutional Security).

It is likely that Bolsonaro offered the parallel wiretapping bureau to the former head of Lava Jato, who did not dedicate himself wholeheartedly to the service, but knows how it should work.

The news about the dossier on police officers and teachers (how many dossiers will there be with names from other areas?) alerts anti-fascist Brazil to pay more attention to what is happening in Argentina.

The Federal Justice system has already ordered the arrest of more than 20 spies who worked clandestinely during the government of Mauricio Macri, all directed by the Federal Intelligence Agency (AFI) and under the command of the agency's director. The spies were cheerfully identified by the group itself as the Super Mario Bros. gang.

Macri mobilized the spies to follow Cristina Kirchner, members of parliament, senators, journalists, union leaders, and other enemies of the government.

Some AFI agents have already denounced their accomplices. What is the similarity between what happened there and what is happening now within Bolsonaro's government?

There are signs of illegality. The Public Prosecutor's Office can try to find out before it's too late and the structure set up by Bolsonaro simply falls apart, as happened in Argentina at the end of his government.