Company investigated for illegal mining is kept in TI Yanomami

Substitute judge Rodrigo Mello, from the 4th Federal Court of Roraima, decided to ban the company Cataratas Poços Artesianos from the Yanomami Indigenous Land, as well as its partners and employees, but only after the execution of contracts signed with the Army and the Space Secretariat for Indigenous Health (Sesai), from the Ministry of Health. The company’s managing partners are Celso Rodrigo de Mello and Rodrigo Martins de Mello, known as Rodrigo Cataratas. Both were denounced last year by the Federal Public Ministry (MPF), and became defendants along with two other people for the alleged practice of illegal mining in the Yanomami TI. They are also accused of other crimes, such as money laundering, criminal organization and attempts to obstruct investigations. According to the complaint, company works would serve as a front to provide prospectors with machinery and logistics. The company itself also mined gold in the region. The MPF asked the government to rescind contracts with the company, given the suspicion of illegal practices. In the request, the agency pointed out that one of the locations planned for drilling the artesian wells, in the Surucucu region, in the municipality of Alto Alegre (RR), was specifically mentioned in the complaint as being one of the points of illegal mining. The company’s contract with the Army’s 6th Engineering and Construction Battalion was worth R$ 185,000, and signed under the bidding waiver regime. For the MPF, “the hiring would have the potential to be used as an attempt to confer legitimacy on maintaining the presence of offenders”. The magistrate responsible for the case said he understood the arguments of the MPF, which is why he banned the company, its partners, administrators, attorneys or agents from the Yanomami TI. However, he said that suspending contracts already in execution, in which drilling machines are already installed, would result in damage to the local communities themselves. In the decision, the federal judge wrote that, in his understanding, “the loss of immediately suspending the continuity of services contracted by public bodies, which will allow access to water resources for the benefit of the local communities themselves, prevails over the risk that the defendants will become use these specific contracts to provide logistical support to the illegal mining activity”. Agência Brasil tries to contact the defense of those cited.

Agência Brasil