The Comptroller General of the Union (CGU) withdrew the secrecy, and the data released on the performance of the Federal Highway Police (PRF) on October 30 last year, the date of the second round of elections, show an “atypical” concentration of operations in the Northeast Region. According to a table presented by the Minister of Justice and Public Security, Flávio Dino, 324 buses were paralyzed on roads in the Northeast, which represents about 46% of the total number of vehicles stopped across the country, 696. The other regions, together , had 372 vehicles stopped. “We now have empirical proof, which comes from the Federal Highway Police itself, in the sense that there was a deviation from the standard, in relation to the routine, ordinary action of the PRF”, said Dino during a press conference to present the data, this afternoon. Thursday (20), in Brasilia. The disclosure of data was a CGU decision based on the analysis of an appeal made to the body based on the Law on Access to Information (LAI). According to the minister, the operation of the PRF in the second round of the elections even surpassed the inspections that take place annually during the period of June festivities in the Northeast, the São João northeastern, which until then was the largest operation carried out by the PRF in the region, in events that last about a month. The data also show that 48 buses were detained in Northeastern states between October 28 and 30, 2022, practically twice as many as the 26 buses that were detained in all other regions of the country combined, over the same period. Fixed inspection points were much higher in the Northeast (290), while a much more populous region, such as the Southeast, recorded 191 points, followed by the South (181), Midwest (153) and North (96). The number of agents who worked in the second round of the 2022 elections was also higher in the Northeast (795), followed by the Southeast (528), South (418), Midwest (381) and North (230) regions. In addition, a total amount of almost R$ 1 million was used to pay overtime so that agents on leave could be summoned to work on election day. The value is much higher than the approximately R$ 685,000 used to “buy” agents’ leave in the Southeast, for example. Suspicions At the time, the intensity of inspection in the Northeast Region caught the attention of voters and mobilized authorities in the country. The president of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), Minister Alexandre de Moraes, even prohibited the PRF from carrying out any operation that affected the public transport of voters. The objective was to prevent the PRF from being mobilized in favor of the campaign for the re-election of the then President Jair Bolsonaro and in disfavor of the campaign of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The petista ended up winning the election. The Federal Police are investigating a trip by the then Minister of Justice, Anderson Torres, on the eve of the second round. The trip to Bahia, at the time, was justified to reinforce the role of federal police in combating electoral crimes, such as buying votes. However, there is suspicion that Torres traveled to pressure the PF to bar voters in the region where Lula had more votes. Torres is currently under preventive detention on suspicion of involvement in the preparation of the January 8 coup acts. Direction Another “anomaly” in the performance of the PRF in last year’s elections, as classified by the Minister of Justice, has to do with the doubling of the budget that was foreseen for the two rounds. Flávio Dino explained that the first electoral plan, which covered both the first and second rounds, was about R$ 3.6 million. At the end of the first electoral stage, however, this initial operational plan was replaced by another, with a budget forecast of more than R$ 3.5 million, a much smaller election, since it no longer covered the choice of parliamentarians and a good part of governors, already elected in the first round. For the executive director of the PRF, Antônio Jorge de Azevedo Barbosa, it was clear that there was a targeted action in the corporation in this period. “There was more than one intervention for this planning and there was a direction for the Northeast. Afterwards, it was corrected for Minas Gerais, but it made it clear that there was an interest that was not the routine interest of the actions that the PRF already participated”, he affirmed. . The general director of the PRF at the time of the actions, Silvinei Vasques, is the target of at least one administrative process at the CGU. Currently, the former director is retired from the corporation. “We have opened a procedure to investigate the conduct of the general director, this is being investigated by the CGU. It concerns a set of actions that are being analyzed in the aggregate, probably”, informed the minister of the CGU, Vinícius Marques de Carvalho. Another administrative process at the PRF itself, which had been improperly archived by the then corporation’s general inspector, Wendel Benevides, had its investigation resumed. Among the planned punishments is Vasques’ withdrawal from retirement.
Agência Brasil
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