March, 05 2015, 01:00pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Christian Poirier, Amazon Watch: +33 770381849 (France), christian@amazonwatch.org, @cpeartree
Brent Millikan, International Rivers: +55 (61) 8153-7009 (Brazil), brent@internationalrivers.org, @BrentMillikan
MaÃra Irigaray, Amazon Watch: +55 (21) 99799-1904 (Brazil), maira@amazonwatch.org, @mairairigaray
Massive Corruption Scandal Implicates Brazil's Amazon Dam Builders
Testimony from jailed operators of Petrobras scandal point to similar corruption scheme involving politicians and major construction firms
WASHINGTON
This week, imprisoned executives from one of Brazil's largest construction firms - who are implicated in an unprecedented corruption scandal involving the parastatal oil company Petrobras - promised to expose a parallel scheme of massive fraud surrounding hydroelectric dams in the Amazon. In a plea deal with the Federal Public Prosecutors' Office (MPF), top executives at Camargo Correa - a principal contractor for Petrobras and the federal government's Amazon dam-building program - vowed to provide details of systematic corruption in the construction of the costly Belo Monte and Jirau megadams.
Detained over 100 days for their involvement in the Petrobras scandal, Camargo Correa's president Dalton dos Santos Avancini and Vice-President Eduardo Leite agreed to explain how a 'cartel' of major construction companies, influential politicians, and high-level government bureaucrats operated a scheme of bid rigging, bribery and kickbacks in the Belo Monte and Jirau projects. Alongside Public Prosecutors, Federal Police are spearheading a criminal probe dubbed "Operation Lava Jato," investigating a group of firms that reads much like a who's who of Brazil's powerful dam industry.
Last December, Paulo Roberto Costa, ex-director of Petrobras and one of the first high-level officials to be implicated in the Lava Jato operation, testified in Brazilian Congress that similar corruption schemes exist in other sectors. "With highways, trains, ports, airports and hydroelectric dams, this happens all over Brazil. All you have to do is investigate, because it happens," he said.
In addition to Lava Jato, Brazil's Central Accounting Office (Tribunal de Contas da Uniao) has initiated an audit of BRL 22.5 billion (US$7.5 billion) in subsidized loans approved by Brazil's National Development Bank (BNDES) for the Belo Monte Dam consortium Norte Energia, S.A. (NESA), covering some 80% of project costs.
"These revelations confirm what we've suspected all along: that projects like Belo Monte are not only an enormous source of corruption, but actually exist because of corruption," said Christian Poirier of Amazon Watch. "It's high time that Belo Monte's backers be held to task for deceiving Brazilian taxpayers while looting public coffers."
"The federal government's obsession with costly megadam projects is largely explained by corruption schemes and has been a disaster for Brazilian society as a whole," noted Brent Millikan of International Rivers. "Taxpayer funds that could be invested in truly sustainable energy solutions such as upscaling solar and wind power have instead been diverted into wasteful and destructive projects such as Belo Monte."
This week, tensions in the Brazilian Congress peaked after Chief Federal Public Prosecutor Rodrigo Janot delivered 28 requests to the Supreme Court for criminal indictments of 54 individuals in connection with corruption schemes uncovered by Operation Lava Jato, including a reported 45 politicians. While names have yet to be disclosed, leaks to the press indicate that the list includes the President of the Senate, Renan Calheiros, and the Chamber of Deputies, Eduardo Cunha. Both politicians are members of the PMDB, one of Brazil's most powerful political parties and part of Dilma Rousseff's ruling coalition.
This news deals a fresh setback to Dilma Rousseff's administration, which is already plummeting in popularity due to public perception of her role in the Petrobras scandal, as well as rising energy bills, water shortages, unemployment and other woes of a stagnating economy. Massive corruption schemes underlying the much-publicized Accelerated Growth Program (PAC) of President Rousseff and her predecessor Luis Inacio Lula da Silva have seriously undermined the credibility of their Worker's Party, which came into power in 2003 on a platform of restoring ethics to government.
Camargo Correa is one of 10 companies that make up the consortium responsible for building Belo Monte. The consortium is comprised of some of Brazil's principal construction firms, including: Andrade Gutierrez, Norberto Odebrecht, OAS Ltda, Queiroz Galvao, Contern, Galvao Engenharia, Serveng-Civilsan, Cetenco and J. Malucelli.
Amazon Watch is a nonprofit organization founded in 1996 to protect the rainforest and advance the rights of indigenous peoples in the Amazon Basin. We partner with indigenous and environmental organizations in campaigns for human rights, corporate accountability and the preservation of the Amazon's ecological systems.
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"There is no defense for putting a tool this dangerous in the hands of any president, and doing so is a historic mark of shame."
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Privacy advocates also criticized how the vote was forced through, as the Biden administration and Senate leaders including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Mark Warner (D-Va.) had emphasized that Section 702 was set to expire on Friday and raised alarms about what would happen to national security if the Senate allowed this to happen. However, as The New York Times pointed out, a national security court ruled this month that the program could run for another year even if the law expired.
"The headlines of state-aligned media screech and crow about the nefarious designs of your fellow citizens and the necessity of foreign wars without end, but find few words for a crime against the Constitution."
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Once Biden had signed the bill, Vitka added on social media: "Shame on the leaders who let House Intelligence veto reform in the darkness, and ram through terrifying surveillance expansions on the basis of outright lies. The Make Everyone A Spy provision will be abused, and history will know who to blame."
Goitein used similar language to condemn the vote.
"This is a shameful moment in the history of the United States Congress," she said on social media. "It's a shameful moment for this administration, as well. But ultimately, it's the American people who pay the price for this sort of thing. And sooner or later, we will."
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden added, "America lost something important today, and hardly anyone heard. The headlines of state-aligned media screech and crow about the nefarious designs of your fellow citizens and the necessity of foreign wars without end, but find few words for a crime against the Constitution."
Schumer announced a deal late Friday to vote on a series of amendments to the bill clearing the way toward its passage, according toTheHill. However, all five amendments that would have added greater privacy protections were voted down, The Washington Post reported.
"If the government wants to spy on the private comms of any American, they should be required to get approval from a judge, as the Founding Fathers intended."
These included an amendment from Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) to require a warrant and another from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) to remove the House language expanding the entities who could be forced to spy, according to Roll Call. The amendments were rejected 42-50 and 34-58 respectively.
"Congress' intention when we passed FISA Section 702 was clear as could be—Section 702 is supposed to be used only for spying on foreigners abroad. Instead, sadly, it has enabled warrantless access to vast databases of Americans' private phone calls, text messages, and e-mails," Durbin posted on social media.
"I'm disappointed my narrow amendment to protect Americans while preserving Section 702 as a foreign intel tool wasn't agreed to," Durbin continued. "If the government wants to spy on the private comms of any American, they should be required to get approval from a judge, as the Founding Fathers intended."
Wyden said in a statement: "The Senate waited until the 11th hour to ram through renewal of warrantless surveillance in the dead of night. But I'm not giving up. The American people know that reform is possible and that they don't need to sacrifice their liberty to have security. It is clear from the votes on very popular amendments that senators were unwilling to send this bill back to the House, no matter how common-sense the amendment before them."
Wyden was not the only one who pledged to keep fighting government surveillance overreach.
Vitka praised Durbin and Wyden, as well as other legislative privacy advocates including Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Warren Davidson (R-Ohio), Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), saying the lawmakers had "built a formidable foundation from which we will all continue to fight for civil liberties."
Goitein also said the opposition of outspoken senators and concerned citizens were "silver linings."
"Because of the heat we were able to bring, we extracted some promises from the administration and the Senate intelligence committee chair. I do think they'll be forced to make SOME changes to mitigate the worst parts of the law, which they can do by including those changes in an upcoming must-pass vehicle, like the National Defense Authorization Act," she added.
The American Civil Liberties Union also responded to the vote on social media.
"Senators were aware of the threat this surveillance bill posed to our civil liberties and pushed it through anyway, promising they would attempt to address some of the most heinous expansions in the near future," the organization said. "We will do everything in our power to ensure these promises are kept."
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