by Pepe Escobar – cross posted with Consortium News
A version of this article first appeared on The Asia Times.
Decades after the fact, a political earthquake that should be rocking Brazil is being met with thunderous silence.
What is now described as the Banestado leaks and CC5gate is straight out of vintage WikiLeaks: a list, published for the first time in full, naming names and detailing what is one of the biggest corruption and money laundering cases in the world for the past three decades.
This scandal allows for what Michel Foucault characterized as the archeology of knowledge. Without understanding these leaks, it’s impossible to place in the proper context the sophisticated Hybrid War unleashed by Washington on Brazil initially via NSA spying on President Dilma Roussef’s first term (2010-2014), all the way to the subsequent Car Wash corruption investigation that jailed former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and opened the way for the election of neofascist patsy Jair Bolsonaro as president.
The scoop on this George-Orwell-does-Hybrid War plot belongs, once again, to independent media: the small website Duplo Expresso, led by a young, daring Bern-based international lawyer named Romulus Maya, which first published the list.
An epic, five-hour podcast brought together the three key protagonists who denounced the scandal in the first place, back in the late 1990s, and now are able to analyze it anew: then governor of Parana state, Roberto Requiao; federal prosecutor Celso Tres; and police superintendent, now retired, Jose Castilho Neto.
In an earlier podcast, Maya and anthropologist Piero Leirner, Brazil’s foremost analyst of Hybrid War, briefed me on the the myriad political intricacies of the leaks while we discussed geopolitics in the Global South.
The CC5 lists are here, here , and here . Let’s see what makes them so special.
The Mechanism
Way back in 1969, the Brazilian Central Bank created what was described as a “CC5 account” to facilitate foreign companies and executives to legally wire assets overseas. For many years the cash flow in these accounts was not significant. Then everything changed in the 1990s – with the emergence of a massive, complex criminal racket centered on money laundering.
The original Banco do Estado do Parana (Banestado) investigation started in 1997. Federal prosecutor Celso Tres was stunned to find that from 1991 to 1996 no less than $124 billion in Brazilian currency was wired overseas. Between 1991 and 2002 that ballooned to a whopping $219 billion – placing Banestado as one of the largest money laundering schemes in history.
Tres’ report led to a federal investigation focused in Foz do Iguacu in southern Brazil, strategically located right at the Tri-Border Area of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay, where local banks were laundering vast amounts of funds through their CC5 accounts.
This is how it worked. U.S. dollar dealers in the black market, linked to bank and government employees, used a vast network of bank accounts under the name of unsuspecting ”smurfs” and phantom companies to launder illegal funds from public corruption, tax fraud and organized crime, mainly through the Banco do Estado do Parana branch in Foz do Iguacu. Hence it is called the Banestado case.
The federal investigation was going nowhere until 2001, when police superintendent Castilho ascertained that most of the funds were actually landing in accounts at the Banestado branch in New York. Castilho arrived in New York in January 2002 to turbo-charge the necessary international money tracking.
Through a court order, Castilho and his team reviewed 137 accounts at Banestado New York, tracking $14.9 billion. Though the CC5 accounts were meant only for foreigners to use, in quite a few cases, the beneficiaries had the same name of Brazilian politicians then serving in Congress, cabinet ministers and even former presidents.
After a month in New York, Castilho was back in Brazil carrying a hefty 400-page report. Yet, despite the overwhelming evidence, he was dropped out of the investigation, which was then put on hold for at least a year. When the new Lula government took power in early 2003, Castilho was back in business.
In April 2003, Castilho identified a particularly interesting Chase Manhattan account named “Tucano” – the nickname of the Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira (PSDB) led by former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who was in power before Lula and always kept very close ties to the Clinton and Blair political machines.
Castilho was instrumental in setting up a parliamentary inquiry commission over the Banestado case. But again, this commission led nowhere – not even a vote on a final report. Most companies involved negotiated a deal with the Brazilian Internal Revenue Service and thus ended any possibility of legal action in regard to tax evasion.
Banestado Meets Car Wash
In a nutshell, the two largest political parties – Cardoso’s neoliberal PSDB and Lula’s Workers’ Party (which never really faced down imperial machinations and the Brazilian rentier class) actively buried an in-depth investigation. Moreover Lula, coming right after Cardoso, and mindful of preserving a minimum of governability, made a strategic decision to not investigate PSDB, or “Tucano,” corruption, including a slew of dodgy privatizations.
New York prosecutors duly prepared a special Banestado list for Castilho of what really mattered for a criminal prosecution to proceed: the full circle of the money laundering scheme, with
(i) funds first illegally remitted out of Brazil using the CC5 accounts,
(ii) passing through the New York branches of the Brazilian banks involved,
(iii) reaching offshore bank accounts and trusts in tax havens (e.g., Cayman, Jersey, Switzerland) and then finally
(iv) going back to Brazil as – fully laundered – “foreign investment,” for the actual use and enjoyment of the final beneficiaries who first got the unaccounted-for money out of the country using the CC5 accounts.
But Brazilian Justice Minister Marcio Thomaz Bastos, appointed by Lula, then nixed it. As superintendent Castilho metaphorically put it, “This, deliberately, prevented me from going back to Brazil with the murdered body.”
While Castilho never got hold of the critical list, at least two Brazilian congressmen, two senators and two federal prosecutors, who would later rise to fame as Car Wash investigation “stars,” Vladimir Aras and Carlos Fernando dos Santos Lima, did get the list.
Why and how the list (let’s call it the “body bag”) never found its way into the criminal proceedings back in Brazil is an extra mystery wrapped up inside the enigma.
Meanwhile, there are “unconfirmed” reports (several sources would not go on record on this) that the list might have been used for outright extortion of the individuals, mostly billionaires, featured on it.
Extra sauce in the judicial sphere comes from the fact that the provincial judge in charge of burying the Banestado case was none other than Sergio Moro, the self-serving Elliot Ness figure who in the next decade would rise to superstar status as the capo di tutti i capi of the massive Car Wash investigation and subsequent justice minister under Bolsonaro. Moro ended up resigning and is now, de facto, already campaigning for president in 2022.
Here is where we find the toxic Banestado-Car Wash connection. Considering what is already public domain about Moro’s modus operandi on Car Wash, as he altered names in documents with the single-minded objective of sending Lula to jail, the challenge now would be to prove how Moro “sold” non-convictions related to Banestado. He has a very convenient legal out: no “body” was found (or formally brought back to criminal proceedings in Brazil), so no one could be found guilty of murder.
As we plunge into excruciating details, Banestado increasingly looks and feels like the Ariadne’s thread that may lead to the beginning of the destruction of Brazil’s sovereignty. It is a tale full of lessons to be learned by the whole Global South.
The Black Market Dollar King
Castilho, in that epic podcast, rang alarm bells when he referred to $17 million that had transited the Banestado branch in New York and then was sent, of all places, to Pakistan. Castilho and his team discovered that a few months after 9/11. He told me his investigators would dig it all up again and that a report exists indicating the origin of these funds.
This is the first time such information has surfaced – and the ramifications may be explosive. We’re talking about dodgy funds, arguably from drugs and weapons operations, leaving the Triple Border Area – Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay – which happens historically to be a top site for CIA and Mossad black ops.
Financing may have been provided by the so-called King of The Black Market Dollars, Dario Messer, via CC5 accounts. It’s no secret that black market operators at the Tri-Border Area are connected to cocaine trafficking via Paraguay – and also to evangelicals. That is the basis of what Maya, Leirner and I have already described as Cocaine Evangelistan.
Messer is an indispensable cog in the recycling mechanism inbuilt into drug trafficking. Money travels to fiscal paradises under imperial protection, is duly laundered, and gloriously resurrects on Wall Street and the City of London, with the extra bonus of the U.S. easing some of its current account deficit. Cue Wall Street’s “irrational exuberance.”
What really matters is free circulation of cocaine — hidden in the odd soya cargo, something that comes with the extra benefit of securing the well being of agro-business. That’s a mirror image of the CIA heroin ratline in Afghanistan I detailed here.
Most of all, politically, Messer is the notorious missing link to judge Moro. Even mainstream O Globo newspaper was forced to admit, last November, that Messer’s shadowy businesses were “monitored” nonstop for two decades by different U.S. agencies out of Asuncion and Ciudad del Este in Paraguay. Moro for his part is had very close relationships with the FBI, CIA and the Department of Justice.
Messer may be the joker in this convoluted plot. But then there’s the Maltese Falcon: There’s only one Maltese Falcon, as the John Huston classic immortalized it. And it’s currently lying in a safe in Switzerland.
I’m referring to the original, official documents submitted by construction giant Odebrecht to the Car Wash investigation, which have been undisputedly “manipulated,” “allegedly” by the company itself, possibly in collusion with (then) Judge Moro and the prosecution team led by Deltan Dallagnol.
This was done possibly for the purpose of incriminating Lula and persons close to him, but also – crucially – to delete individuals’ names who should never be brought to light, or justice.
The first serious political impact after the release of the Banestado leaks by Duplo Expresso is that Lula’s lawyers Cristiano and Valeska Zanin have finally requested Swiss authorities to hand over the originals.
Ex-Senator and former Governor Robert Requiao of Paraná state was the only Brazilian politician to publicly ask Lula, back in February, to go for the documents with the list in Switzerland. It is no surprise that Requiao was the first public figure in Brazil to now ask Lula to make all this content public once the former president gets hold of it.
The real, not adulterated Odebrecht list of people involved in corruption revealed by Duplo Expresso is crammed with big names – including the judiciary elite.
By comparing the two versions, Lula’s lawyers may finally be able to demonstrate the falsification of “evidence” that led to the jailing of Lula but also, among other developments, the exile of Ecuador’s former President Rafael Correa; the imprisonment of Correa’s vice president, Jorge Glas; the imprisonment of Peru’s former President Ollanta Humala and wife and, most dramatically, the suicide of Peru’s former two-time President Alan Garcia.
The Brazilian Patriot Act
The big political question now is not in fact to uncover the master manipulator who buried the Banestado scandal two decades ago. Rather, as anthropologist Leirner details it, what matters most is that the leaked CC5 accounts focus on how the corrupted Brazilian bourgeoisie, with the help of their political and judicial partners, both national and foreign, solidifies itself as a rentier class, while remaining submissive and kept in check by “secret,” imperial files.
The Banestado leaks and the CC5 accounts should be seen as a political opening for Lula to go for broke. This is all-out (Hybrid) War. Blinking is not an option. The geo-political and geo-economic project of destroying Brazilian sovereignty and turning it into an imperial sub-colony is winning – hands down.
A measure of the explosiveness of the Banestado leaks and CC5gate has been the reaction by assorted limited hangouts: a thundering silence that encompasses leftist parties and alternative, supposedly progressive media. Mainstream media, for whom judge Moro is a sacred cow, at best spins it as “old story,” “fake news” and even a “hoax.”
It’s now clear that creditors of the Brazilian state were, originally, debtors. Comparing different accounts, it’s possible to square the circle on Brazil’s legendary “fiscal imbalance” – exactly as this plague is brought up, once again, with the intent of decimating the assets of the ailing Brazilian state. Finance Minister Paulo Guedes, a neo-Pinochetist and Milton Friedman cheerleader, has already warned he’ll keep selling state companies like there’s no tomorrow.
Lula’s plan B would be to clinch some sort of deal that would bury the whole dossier — just like the original Banestado investigation was buried two decades ago — to preserve the leadership of the Workers’ Party as domesticated opposition, and without touching on the absolutely essential issue: how Finance Minister Guedes is selling out Brazil.
That would be the line favored by Fernando Haddad, who lost the presidential election to Bolsonaro in 2018: a sort of Brazilian Michelle Bachelet (Chile’s former president), an ashamed neoliberal sacrificing everything to have yet another shot at power possibly in 2026.
Were Plan B to happen it would galvanize the wrath of trade unions and social movements – the flesh and blood of Brazilian working classes that are on the verge of being totally decimated by neoliberalism on steroids with the toxic combination of the U.S.-inspired, Brazilian version of the Patriot Act, replete with military schemes to profit from “Cocaine Evangelistan”.
All this after Washington – successfully – nearly destroyed national champion Petrobras, an initial objective of the NSA spying. Zanin, Lula’s lawyer, also adds – maybe too late – that the “informal cooperation” between Washington and the Car Wash op was in fact illegal (according to decree number 3.810/2001).
What Will Lula Do?
Included in the leaked list is Banestado “VIP list.” It includes the current president of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, Supreme Court Justice Luis Roberto Barroso, bankers, media tycoons and industrialists. Car Wash prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol is very close to Barroso, the neoliberal Supreme Court justice in question.
The VIP list should be read as a road map of the money laundering practices of the Brazilian 0.01 percent – roughly estimated to be 20,000 families who own the close to $1 trillion of Brazilian internal debt. A great deal of those funds had been recycled back to Brazil as “foreign investment” through the CC5 scheme back in the 1990s. And that’s exactly how Brazil’s internal debt exploded.
Still no one knows where the Banestado-enabled torrent of dodgy money actually landed. The “body bag” was never formally acknowledged to have been brought back from New York and never made its way into the criminal proceedings. Yet money laundering is still in progress – and thus the statute of limitation does not apply – so somebody, anybody would have to be thrown in the slammer. It doesn’t seem that will be the case anytime soon, though.
Meanwhile, enabled by the U.S. Deep State, transnational finance and local comprador elites, some in uniform and some in robes, the slow motion Hybrid War coup against Brazil keeps rambling on. And day by day inching closer to full spectrum dominance.
The key question is: what will Lula do about it?
Lula and his party are like Syriza and Tsipras, cursing the establishment but the only thing they worry about is the destruction of the Western Christian Culture, fakestinians and gays… The only thing I supported about Lula is his cooperation with BRICS!!
Lula is corrupt to the core along with PT
Why was this comment allowed?
You can’t blame Lula for not being sophisticated.
He do not have the basis to deny the LGBT agenda. Putin has a church behind him. Lula has only his opinions.
Very interesting, thanks.
The link between Messer, drug-dealing and agro-business may also replicate on the same Messer, cigarette smuggling from Paraguay to Argentina and Brasil and the tax-evasion scheme known as exports sub-invoicing (selling crops to a third party in a fiscal haven for lower prices so fiscal authorities in these countries receive less money in sale and export taxes).
Former presidents Macri from Argentina and Cartes from Paraguay hasted to meet face to face just a week ago despite pandemic restrictions. It seems that Messer may take advantage of an offer from a Brasilian court in which he may declare the money laundered scheme related to Cartes, and apparently Macri too.
https://www.pagina12.com.ar/278198-que-fue-a-hacer-mauricio-macri-a-paraguay
https://www.ambito.com/politica/mauricio-macri/el-curriculum-espeso-horacio-cartes-el-amigo-macri-n5117261
Tem pessoas que pensam que Lula é da esquerda, quando na verdade, é um assaltante de cofres públicos, que perdeu a moral para falar, mostrar ou fazer seja lá o que for contra seus oponentes. Espero que passe seus últimos dias na prisão. A “esquerda” do Brasil é desonesta e fede !!!
Google translation,MOD:
There are people who think Lula is on the left, when in fact, he is a robber of public coffers, who has lost his morale to speak, show or do anything against his opponents. I hope you spend your last days in prison. Brazil’s “left” is dishonest and stinks !!!
Esse comentário é tipico do pensamento atual da população brasileira desinformada e apoiadora da lava jato e familia Bolsonaro. O grande erro de Lula foi ser ingênuo e acreditar na Republica. Vivemos anos que realmente acreditamos no Brasil como um grande país, e desde o golpe que tirou o PT da presidencia (2016), estamos em ruínas, somo um fantoche dos EUA. Os militares brasileiros são subordinados aos EUA.
Entrevista recente do Lula
“A Polícia Federal, o Ministério Público e o ex-juiz Moro foram serviçais do departamento de justiça dos Estados Unidos e do FBI”
“A verdade é que a América Latina não tem o direito de ser democrática e cuidar do seu povo, porque os norte-americanos ameaçam os latino-americanos como se fossem seu próprio quintal”, disse Lula. “Alguém sempre aparece e estrangula, alguém sempre vem prejudicar a democracia. Os Estados Unidos estão sempre por trás disso”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=511&v=Q_GxErDm9fE&feature=emb_logo
Google Tradutor:
This comment is typical of the current thinking of the uninformed and supportive Brazilian population of the car wash and the Bolsonaro family. Lula’s big mistake was being naive and believing in the Republic. We have lived for years that we really believe in Brazil as a great country, and since the coup that took the PT out of the presidency (2016), we are in ruins, like a puppet from the USA. The Brazilian military is subordinate to the USA.
Lula’s recent interview
“The Federal Police, the Public Prosecutor’s Office and former judge Moro were servants of the United States Department of Justice and the FBI”
“The truth is that Latin America does not have the right to be democratic and to care for its people, because the Americans threaten the Latin Americans as if they were their own backyard,” said Lula. “Someone always appears and strangles, someone always comes to undermine democracy. The United States is always behind this ”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=511&v=Q_GxErDm9fE&feature=emb_logo
Lula, Dilma, Bolsonaro, FHC… Todos eles são farinha do mesmo saco e merda da mesma privada. Não esqueça que Lula “beijou” o ex presidente dos EUA, Georg Bush quando o segundo visitou o Brasil.
http://www.abi.org.br/lula-e-bush/
https://www.realclearworld.com/blog/2009/01/brazil_lula_invites_bush_for_f_1.html
Lula amou a corrupção e roubou mais que os outros que o antecederam…. Já está na história do BRASIL !!!
Yandex translation. Mod:
Lula, Dilma, Bolsonaro, FHC…All of them are flour from the same bag and s*** from the same private. Do not forget that Lula “kissed” former US President Georg Bush when the second visited Brazil. Lula loved corruption and stole more than the others who preceded him…. It is already in the history of Brazil !!!
Se a culpa de Lula foi chamar Georg Bush para pescar, o que seria de Putin que autorizou o mesmo George Bush e os americanos de usarem bases aéreas russas para atacar o Afeganistão?
Lula e sua falecida esposa foram acusados inclusive de comprarem dois pequenos barcos para seus netos nos valor de 1000 dolares (sim apenas 1000 doláres), e isso passou na televisão por muito tempo…. Essa é a corrupção que você está falando? O Brasil foi assaltado, o pai da energia nuclear brasileira, Almirante Othon foi preso e acusado de corrupção.. Todos que queriam a soberania do Brasil foram acusados de corrupção e presos. Hoje, pela primeira vez na história do Brasil, temos uma força estrangeira que usa bases em solo brasileiro.
O que está na história do Brasil é mais uma vez, como em 64, como em 54, o Brasil nunca pode sonhar em ser soberano e sua população analfabeta politicamente acredita em mentiras contadas por jornais e televisão patrocinado por forças estrangeiras.
Google Tradutor:
If a mistake by Lula was to call Georg Bush to fish, or seriously to Putin who authorized the same George Bush and the Americans to use Russian air bases to attack in Afghanistan?
Lula and his deceased wife were accused of buying two small boats for their values worth 1000 dollars (yes, only 1000 dollars), and this has been on television for a long time …. This is the corruption you are talking about ? Brazil was assaulted, the father of Brazilian nuclear energy, Admiral Othon was arrested and accused of corruption. Everyone who wanted Brazil’s sovereignty has been accused of corruption and imprisoned. Today, for the first time in the history of Brazil, we have a foreign force that uses the bases on Brazilian soil.
What is in the history of Brazil is again, as in 64, as in 54, the Brazil can never dream of being sovereign and its illiterate population politically believes in lies told by newspapers and television sponsored by foreign entities.
Give the evidences he is not left wing please?
Did you even read the article and understood it?
Welcome Saker community to the hell normal Brazilians need to deal every day with. Olavist Flat-earthers + bolsominions (a further degraded kind of ideological drone) infestation are the forward regiment of the EE (Evil Empire) at the hybrid war in Brazil.
Ele (Lula) não é da esquerda porque não existe esquerda no Brasil. Na verdade, não existe nem direita nem esquerda, o que existe são assaltantes de cofres públicos. Se o corrupto Lula representa alguma esquerda, é uma pseuda esquerda, não a que queremos para o Brasil.
Translation. Mod:
He (Lula) is not left because there is no left in Brazil. In fact, there is neither right nor left, what exists are robbers of public coffers. If the corrupt Lula represents some left, it is a pseudo left, not the one we want for Brazil
E qual esquerda seria boa para o Brasil em sua opinião? Lembre-se do ditado: “antes bom e feito que perfeito nunca feito”. E você concordaria comigo que mesmo que você não goste de Lula, o Brasil hoje estaria muito melhor que com o Bolsonaro.
Google translation,MOD:
And which left would be good for Brazil in your opinion? Remember the saying: “before good and done than perfect never done”. And you would agree with me that even if you don’t like Lula, Brazil today would be much better off than with Bolsonaro.
Criminal Politicians & Their Partners In Crime Love Obscurity and Anonymity
For Pepe and all readers of this thread, especially the first three, and especially Brazilians who have zero trust in EITHER the present government OR Lula or Dilma OR any government in the history of Brazil, I am going to throw into this discussion something lacking in names of any potential Brazilian or regional savior, but more in the conceptual nature……….the metaphor……….. of Street Lighting In A City.
Not the absolute elimination of ALL crime and corruption….by 2021…..but dramatic disincentives against crime and corruption in NEW SYSTEMS of Finance, Law & Governance, in comparison to the rampant incentives in the entire world, but especially virulent in South America, for corruption………. within this decade.
Not guaranteed. Nothing is guaranteed. But possible, available.
NOW, scoff cynically, if you will, but read this linked article and keep it on the back burner for further study, as you would mull over a dark shadows eliminating municipal street lighting system, were you a city planner in a city plagued by muggers, rapists, kidnappers and murderers, analogous to the frightening money laundering criminals and parasites that Pepe writes about:
https://craigwright.net/blog/law-regulation/bitcoin-fights-corruption/
Your first negative reaction (which I fully anticipate….lol)……….. will arise from a simple NOMINALIST misconception concerning what I and the author of the above article mean by the “name” of the vastly differing ideas and opposite interpretations that exist in people’s minds when they hear or read the word “Bitcoin”.
However, the reality in one word, interpreted either correctly or incorrectly, can literally be worlds apart in impact and practical reality, within this decade, when the standard common error or conceptual trap is immediately fallen into, namely that “Bitcoin” (but which version???) “avoids LAW & Government”.
Corrupted versions do that….or rather attempt unsuccessfully to do that.
But NOT the original. Consider these excerpts:
“……………… My vision lies in a system that will utterly destroy crime. I designed Bitcoin not to avoid government, but to act within law. It is a system that will bring down activist criminal groups and more mainstream traditional criminals for what they are. As we saw with the collapse of Silk Road and — just the other day — the arrest of hundreds of people involved with child porn rings, Bitcoin enables the tracing of criminal activity, allowing law enforcement to shut such activities down.
If you purchase drugs using Bitcoin, you will be recorded forever.
If you buy child porn using Bitcoin, your heinous crime will be found out.
If you create ransomware based on Bitcoin, eventually your money will be seized.
In time, governments will understand the true power of Bitcoin. It is not something for the 1 or 2 per cent of outcasts that seek to parasitically benefit from the hard work of others.
……………….Bitcoin is about destroying corruption. With records and transparency, police and officials cannot commit crime, and they cannot subvert the system that they are meant to support. With records and transparency, Bitcoin enables government that helps the people and undermines that which subverts trust and breeds corruption.”
ME again: Many people among those intrigued by this “new kid” on the Financial Block (pun intended) have “get rich quick ideas” directly opposite to those of the author of the article, who proclaims he is the inventor and will soon prove it in court. And such people seeking shortcuts to wealth, like the Brazilian Political Elites, seek darkness, shadows and have the exact opposite idea in mind to what the inventor had in mind.
This is not some esoteric side issue only for coders and geeks. Not is it a guarantee of a coming utopia. What it is, is an available technology that will not replace the Dollar or the Ruble or the Brazilian Real.
However it IS a “lighting system” consisting of an immutable public accounting ledger ….. immune to fudging or corruption and double and triple ledger book-keeping fakery in use in the corruption Pepe describes that a great deal of data in this digital data world we inhabit …including those national currencies and many more COULD utilize………particularly if their citizens comprehend what it can do to end the corruption that Pepe’s article details……….and IF the people have the political will to comprehend it and insist on that street lighting……that immutable public ledger…where all crime and corruption cannot be instantly prevented…….but everything of public concern within it CAN ALL BE TRACED….infinitely better than at present.
While your privacy can be kept private, subject only to public scrutiny based on court orders after proving probable cause. Private..Pseudonymous .but NOT Anonymous. How do you hold someone to terms of a transaction or deal if you have no idea who they actually are??
But “peer to peer” pseudonymity ,,,they know who they are each dealing with, privately from the rest of the world…..unless their activities show probable cause of violation of Law…..and there is therefore private remedy for breach of contract between them …which if not settled privately……CAN bring Law and Law enforcement in, as the last resort.
Just scratching the surface here, briefly ….. for what might be coming in terms of global monetary reset………and if you are paying attention to metals these days…you may already sense that that Reset…… may be coming very much sooner than some think…….and hard and fast at that…………..as FIAT systems go flying off the rails of Infinite Quantitative Easing # 3, # 4 and # 5…….in the weeks and months ahead.
If Lula was robber, he would enjoy lavish parties in the White House, not sit in jail.
Lula will do absolutely nothing. Social Democracy is a spent force everywhere. It was good for creating social peace in the imperialist West by granting concessions to its working class based on imperialist loot at the expense of the Third World. Since the fall of the USSR and the socialist camp 30 years ago, Social Democracy has no role to play, not even the one of hoodwinking. This is proved by the very plain, utter contempt the Zionazis show people such as Lula, Corbyn, and Tsipras. Lula was unceremoniusly put in jail sentenced to 12 long years but was released 19 months later. Care to guess what that means to his readiness to start investigating Zionazi crime, let alone do something about it? As for Corbyn, he was neutered by the Ziomedia and their usual buzzword sloganeering. Tsipras was told in no uncertain terms what the Eurocrats think about “EU without austerity” and capitulated instantly, right in the wake of the referendum which Syriza won.
True.
Social democracy was only possible as long as the USSR lived. After it fell, social democracy became “green neoliberalism”.
Left-wing forces will either become “Stalinist” or will be swallowed.
Social democracy is the name of the Brazilian party against Lula!
Why are you both trying to link Lula with this ideology?
Case was closed long ago. There is nothing to be done.
This is a lie, there is jurisprudence that allows to condemn the crimes of the Banestado (The STF case against Maluf).
Banestado is over.
It can’t be reopened.
Essa pode ser sua opinião, mas não é o entendimento do STF… Os crimes de corrupção e evasão de divisas já estão prescritos. Mas a prescrição do crime de lavagem de dinheiro não, ação 863, estabeleceu jurisprudência que considera a lavagem de dinheiro como caráter permanente, então enquanto, o dinheiro estiver escondido, não começa a contar o prazo para a prescrição do crime.
Google translation,MOD:
That may be your opinion, but it is not the STF’s understanding … The crimes of corruption and foreign exchange evasion are already prescribed. But the prescription of the crime of money laundering, action 863, has established jurisprudence that considers money laundering as permanent, so while the money is hidden, the time limit for the prescription of the crime does not begin to count.
Yes and the STF, the ones that did the Coup detat , are the right ones to save the entire situation. lol
Its over! Look to the future!
“action 863” This is not a language from the Brazillian judiciary system. There is no action, what a hell is that?
here, just for you:
https://bfadvogados.wordpress.com/2017/10/09/stf-decide-prazo-de-prescricao-do-crime-de-lavagem-de-dinheiro/
STF decide prazo de prescrição do crime de lavagem de dinheiro
“Nada obstante, o Colegiado acolheu a manifestação da defesa relativamente à ocorrência de prescrição do primeiro, do segundo, do terceiro e do quinto fatos delituosos constantes na denúncia. Salientou que o acusado possui mais de setenta anos, fazendo incidir a regra do art. 115 (2) do Código Penal (CP), que manda computar os prazos prescricionais pela metade. Assim, haja vista ser a pena máxima cominada aos delitos imputados de dez anos de reclusão e, em 29.9.2011, quando o STF recebeu parcialmente a denúncia, já haver se passado mais de oito anos, a punibilidade desse conjunto de fatos está extinta, nos termos dos arts. 107, IV, e 109, II, do CP (3).”
[Google-translate Mod
STF decides time limit for the crime of money laundering
“Notwithstanding, the Collegiate welcomed the defense manifestation regarding the occurrence of prescription of the first, second, third and fifth criminal facts contained in the complaint. He stressed that the accused is over seventy years old, making the rule of art. 115 (2) of the Penal Code (CP), which orders prescription periods to be computed in half. Thus, considering that the maximum penalty imposed on the offenses charged with ten years of imprisonment and, on 9/29/2011, when the STF partially received the complaint, more than eight years have passed, the punishment of this set of facts is extinct, pursuant to arts. 107, IV, and 109, II, of CP (3). ”]
Get over it! Its done! Do you want to reopen it? Do a revolution and END the STF, the ones you say could save the situaion.
I read many comments here disregarding Lula as a true Leftist leader or as a leader with integrity.
However, if he is functional to the local élites or to the Department of State/Pentagon, why so much media and court pressure to send him to prison for an apartment in Guaruja that he never posessed? Moro sentenced him on “his deepest convictions”, not on evidence. That doesn’t mean that the PT is 100% clean, but compare to Eduardo Cunha…
If Lula were a puppet from the US or from the Brazilian establishment, he wouldn’t be bothered. In fact, he’d be advertised as an alternative to the current clown in charge, but the courts are adamant in keeping him out of the way to the Planalto.
If there ware a true punishment for courrupt politicians, FH Cardoso (deeply involved in several scandals) and Temer (the scandal involving his assistant Vieira Lima with several hundred million Reais in cash is more than enough) wouldn’t be free.
Lula is dangerous to the establishment not because he is Marxist or such, but because he implements and solidifies policies involving a light but steady trend over wealth distribution. Getting tens of million Brazilians out of poverty is an enourmous achievement.
”Moro sentenced him on ’his deepest convictions’, not on evidence.”
Another case of ”highly likely”; lovely. Of course the Zionazis don’t mind much greater corruption in their own ranks. Likewise, their concept of ’greed’ amounts to workers demanding salaries above bare subsistence levels.
Lula is a Brazilian representative of global Social Democracy which has lost or, rather, turned into the left hand of neoliberalism. If he were to try and extend cooperation with Russia and China again, he would be assassinated on the spot, and he knows it.
Social democracy (PSDB) are the ones against Lula in Brazil. They are the ones that did the coup!
I’m recognizing a pattern on those comments trying to associate Lula with this ideology.
Beyond the “Pro-Democracy” hybrid war and regime change of Brazil, there is also another danger: that of being compelled/dragged by America into a war against Venezuela.
Trump’s recent comment that something is going to happen to Venezuela should be taken as a clear and present threat of (escalated) war.
Also, America’s military proconsul in South America, SOUTHCOM, has been ominously expanding its military control over Brazil and Columbia in preparation for an aggression against Venezuela:
“Lula went on to reference a recently broadcast meeting between US President Donald Trump and US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) generals. Comparing them to members of a Baseball team, Commander Adm. Craig S. Faller boasted that Colombian Brigadier General Juan Carlos Correa, and Brazilian Major General David are paid by Colombia and Brazil “to work for me.”
Such a blatant public display of Colombia and Brazil’s submission shocked observers, not least because the two neighbours would be the most likely military allies in a threatened US attack on Venezuela.”
Brazil, Southcom and the Push Towards War
https://libya360.wordpress.com/2020/07/27/brazil-southcom-and-the-push-towards-war/
It’s like a rabbit hole that ends in a (Removed language,MOD) pit.
I think the only solution is to reset the continent – give it all to someone competent who’ll set up a working system before giving them independence back
Everything that happened was allowed by Lula’s mistakes.
He could have prevented the coup but he was so blind…. happy because Jose Dirceu, the former future Brazil president, was not around anymore.
Lula did not even tried to hit them once. All the time trying to negotiate with them.
Lula, the great deal maker. Deal with that now.
Weakly working hours? Go to you Sindicate. Are you joking Lula?
Billions paid from Lula to the via TV every year. Did he tried to stop it? Of course not. He tried to negotiate using this. Of course they won’t negotiate with a low life non white guy with 9 fingers.
What was he thinking?