Public Prosecutor acknowledges Rodrigo De Grandis's mistake.

247 - The situation of prosecutor Rodrigo de Grandis, who was in charge of the investigations into the Alstom case in São Paulo, is delicate within the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office. An alleged "administrative error" in his office allowed a significant part of the case to be shelved in Switzerland.

Given the international embarrassment, which also raises suspicions of malfeasance by the Prosecutor's Office in the case (read more hereThe Public Prosecutor's Office released a statement last night regarding this matter. Read it below:

28/10/13 - CLARIFICATION NOTE - ALSTOM CASE

Regarding international cooperation between the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office in São Paulo and the Public Prosecutor's Office of Switzerland in the Alstom case, the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office clarifies that:

The Public Prosecutor's Office in São Paulo carried out the investigative steps outlined in the original request from the Swiss Public Prosecutor's Office. The request reached the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office in May 2010, and the hearings with the investigated parties, requested by the foreign authorities, began that same month.

Regarding the supplementary investigations requested by the Swiss Public Prosecutor's Office, we inform you that, according to the information gathered so far, due to an administrative error, a supplementary request for investigations sent by the Swiss authorities in 2011 has not yet been addressed because it was mistakenly filed in a folder of auxiliary documents, when it should have been attached to the main international cooperation file.

It should also be noted that the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office has already communicated the incident to all authorities directly interested in the investigation, including the Department of Asset Recovery and International Legal Cooperation (DRCI).

Finally, it is worth noting that an investigation into the case is still ongoing and that the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office has not received formal notification from the Swiss authorities regarding the closure of the investigations in that country.

The text is cautious. It points to human error and indicates that further measures related to the case may be taken. Especially because, if prevarication were proven, De Grandis could be punished by the National Council of the Public Prosecutor's Office.

Here's what Brazilian law says about the crime of prevarication: 

Penal Code – Prevarication (art. 319): To unduly delay or fail to perform an official act, or to perform it against an express provision of law, in order to satisfy a personal interest or feeling:

Penalty – imprisonment for three months to one year, and a fine.

Law 8429/92 – Article 11: Any action or omission that violates the duties of honesty, impartiality, legality, and loyalty to the institutions constitutes an act of administrative misconduct that violates the principles of public administration, and notably:

(…) II – to unduly delay or fail to perform an official act;

Internal Regulations of the CNMP – Art. 82. A complaint against a member of the Public Prosecutor's Office for inaction or unjustified delay in carrying out procedural or administrative acts may be filed by a Councilor, ex officio, or by any interested party.

Under Under pressure, Rodrigo de Grandis was labeled a "deep drawer" by the legal news portal Consultor Jurídico. Read below:

DEEP DRAWER

The Alstom case exemplifies already known failings of the prosecutor.

By Pedro Canário, from Conjur

The dismissal of part of the investigation into the business dealings of the French company Alstom in Brazil is not the first example of a lack of cooperation from federal prosecutor Rodrigo De Grandis with an investigation. A court ruling and lawyer Renê Ariel Dotti point to the prosecutor as one of those responsible for the lack of conclusion of the investigations into the illegalities of the infamous Operation Satiagraha, which is currently awaiting judgment by the Supreme Federal Court.

The partial withdrawal of the investigation in the Alstom case was reported by FSP on October 26th. The reason was that, even after being summoned, the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office in São Paulo did not provide the information requested by the Public Prosecutor's Office of Switzerland. Rodrigo De Grandis (photoThe investigator in charge of the investigations in Brazil said there had been a "technical error": the documents had been cataloged in the wrong drawer.

In the case of Operation Satiagraha, in addition to shelved documents, there was also a lack of action and half-hearted actions on the part of the prosecutor, who is accused of taking depositions and not including them in the case file.

Operation Satiagraha is the most famous mega-operation of the Federal Police. It investigated financial crimes allegedly committed by the Opportunity investment bank and its owners, Daniel Dantas and Dório Ferman. It stemmed from the so-called Operation Chacal, which investigated crimes of industrial espionage, also attributed to Dantas, during the dispute for controlling shares of Brasil Telecom. The company interested in taking control, which belonged to the Opportunity Fund, chaired by Dantas, was Telecom Italia.

De Grandis was responsible for the Satiagraha investigation and, later, for the criminal proceedings that resulted from it. The operation was overturned by the Superior Court of Justice. It was discovered that the Federal Police delegate responsible for the investigations, Protógenes Queiroz (now a federal deputy for the PCdoB of São Paulo), illegally hired agents from the Brazilian Intelligence Agency (Abin) to "help" in the investigations. The "fruit of the poisonous tree" doctrine was applied: if the evidence was collected illegally, the entire operation is tainted.

De Grandis's actions have been questioned at various points during the Satiagraha investigations. The most forceful complaint comes from professor and criminal lawyer Renê Ariel Dotti, who, in a petition, accuses the prosecutor of improperly questioning a witness and then refusing to show the results of the questioning to the defense. De Grandis was contacted by the magazine. Counselto respond to the accusations made by Dotti, but did not respond to requests for comment.

Visit by mistake
During the Satiagraha investigations, the Federal Police conducted a search at the headquarters of Angra Partners, successor to Opportunity in the investment fund that controlled BrT, the Opportunity Fund. During this search and seizure operation, several hard drives, computers, and a notebook containing notes by Angra's president, Alberto Guth, were seized.

These notes hinted at cash payments to people involved in the episode, and even to judges and ministers. But these are only insinuations, without concrete proof. And in search of evidence, Rodrigo De Grandis questioned Guth, supposedly in order to find out what those notes meant.

However, according to a petition submitted by Dantas' defense to the Supreme Federal Court (STF) in the inquiry investigating the motivation behind Operation Satiagraha, "what should have been an interrogation turned into a superficial statement." The document, signed by Renê Ariel Dotti, states that the result of the questionnaire "denotes the prosecutor's interest in not investigating facts with probable characteristics of a crime."

“The testimony is embarrassing to read, given its superficiality. There was no questioning of the corruption of authorities indicated in the manuscripts, the content of which could have prompted a search for the material truth. And worse, the prosecutor did not initiate an investigative procedure, nor, as far as we know, did he take any action regarding this statement, keeping it hidden,” says the petition, delivered to the Supreme Federal Court in March of this year.

Renê Dotti, on the contrary, claims that "great effort was made" to ensure that Dantas's defense never had access to Guth's testimony. At the end of 2011, the Supreme Court issued an injunction guaranteeing Daniel Dantas access to the evidence collected by the Federal Police during the investigation at Angra Partners. Given this, there was concern that the Federal Police would move to obstruct access to these hard drives and computers.

Therefore, the Regional Prosecutor's Offices in Rio de Janeiro, Brasília, and São Paulo (where De Grandis works) were summoned to inform the lawyers of Daniel Dantas and Dorio Ferman whether there were any criminal administrative proceedings related to the case. According to Dotti, Rio and Brasília responded promptly. De Grandis did not.

Given the negligence in responding to the request, and after more than four months without any reply, Dório Ferman filed a Writ of Mandamus before the TRF-3 (Regional Federal Court of the 3rd Region) against prosecutor Rodrigo De Grandis. "Only with the provision of information by the respondent authority did the appellant see confirmation of the information regarding the holding of said hearing.".

Calculation of the method
The actions of current congressman Protógenes Queiroz in Operation Satiagraha resulted in a conviction for procedural fraud and violation of professional secrecy, according to... sentence by Federal Judge Ali Mazloum, of the 7th Federal Criminal Court of São Paulo.

In the ruling, Mazloum states that "the case is emblematic" because it represents "the investigation of a method," described by the judge himself: clandestine monitoring, participation of ABIN (Brazilian Intelligence Agency), "serious indications of infiltration of private interests in the official investigation," and espionage of authorities. Mazloum's conclusion is that Protógenes proceeded in this way because he had electoral ambitions, since among those wiretapped were several authorities linked to various parties.

What caught Ali Mazloum's attention in the case was the "complete emptying of the investigation" by the Public Prosecutor's Office. "The Federal Public Prosecutor's Office didn't even want to investigate the illegal participation of ABIN (Brazilian Intelligence Agency) in carrying out functions exclusive to the Judicial Police. Private individuals, agents (...) were simply left aside by the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office," the judge states in the ruling.

The involvement of businessman Luis Roberto Demarco, a former employee of Dantas and a competitor in the stock market, in Operation Satiagraha is yet to be proven. The records of the accusation of fraud and breach of confidentiality against Protógenes revealed the existence of more than one hundred phone calls between the police chief and the businessman. However, prosecutor Rodrigo De Grandis, at the time, believed that this evidence should not be included in the case, also according to Ali Mazloum's interpretation of the sentence.