Representative Beto Preto has until Monday (17th) to reach a settlement in impropriety case
Former Paraná Health Secretary negotiates with prosecutors, potentially avoiding conviction impacting political rights.
Tempo previsto
16/4/2025
Sharp rise in cannabis prescriptions shows strong market growth in Brazil in just one year.
Since 2018, the sale of cannabis-based products has increased by 342.3%. Between 2021 and 2022, more than R$ 77 billion (approximately US$15.4 billion using an exchange rate of 5 BRL to 1 USD for illustrative purposes) were transacted. The figures are from a survey by the Cannabis & Health Portal released by Agência Brasil.
Last year, prescriptions increased by 487.8%. The number of doctors who recommended purchasing from pharmacies also rose, from 6,300 (2021) to 15,500 (2022).
The medical specialty with the highest number of prescriptions was neurology (33%), followed by psychiatry (26%), geriatrics (8%), general practice (5%), and orthopedics (3%).
Leia insights sobre a interação de humanos com modelos de linguagem de IA, e sobre os ODS no Brasil. Lab Educação 2050 Ltda, que mantém este site, é signatária do Pacto Global das Nações Unidas.
Medical use boosts innovation, enhancing care and human development.
Cannabis Rx bolsters public health, incorporating novel treatments.
Former Paraná Health Secretary negotiates with prosecutors, potentially avoiding conviction impacting political rights.
Federal Congressman for Paraná, Beto Preto (PSD), has until Monday (17th) to accept or reject a deal with the Public Prosecutor's Office (MP). The summons was ordered by the 1st Court of Public Finance of Apucarana (PR), relating to a case of administrative impropriety.
As a condition for closing the case, the MP proposes that Preto compensate for damages and pay a fine of R$ 25,000. In the lawsuit, the prosecution points to losses to public funds caused by a fraudulent bidding process in 2013, amounting to R$ 127,194.43.
Beto Preto headed the Health Department in Paraná during the pandemic. It was then that he made a name for himself in the election that took him to Brasília. He is currently on Governor Ratinho Júnior's shortlist for succession to the Iguaçu Palace. If convicted of an act of impropriety, he could have his political rights suspended.
According to the Public Prosecutor's Office, Beto Preto, then president of the Intermunicipal Consortium of the Ivaí Valley (Cisvir), contributed to a bid-rigging scheme by assisting a criminal organization led by the deceased businessman Marcelo Cernescu.
The then-president approved a bidding procedure without considering several irregularities. The scheme involved, according to the MP, shell companies and the contracting of services considered unnecessary because they should have been provided directly by the public administration.
In the initial petition, the prosecution describes illegalities in the bidding process for the contracting of an object described as "unnecessary, costly, and flagrantly illegal".
Furthermore, the elements gathered in the investigation indicate that, to achieve the illicit objectives, regardless of the contracting municipality, a similar modus operandi was employed, consisting of a joint effort between public officials and businessmen of the group to "assemble" bidding processes for the contracting of an unnecessary, costly, and flagrantly illegal object, whose acts bear clear indications of concealment.
—Initial petition of the Public Prosecutor's Office.
For the MP, the items in the bidding process do not justify hiring a private company, and it is a mere artifice "unequivocally created for the diversion of money from public coffers".
Congressman Beto Preto even had his assets frozen, along with the other defendants. Due to a change in the Administrative Improbity Law approved in 2021, the judge in the case ordered the unfreezing of the assets.
Micro-doc reveals Jenin camp reality, a symbol of Palestinian resistance in the West Bank.
Ten Palestinians were killed and one hundred injured by Israeli military forces in one of the largest operations against Palestinians in the Jenin refugee camp in years.
Israel has illegally occupied the West Bank, where Jenin is located, since 1967. This represents 56 years of illegal occupation, violating international law.
Palestinians are the largest refugee group in the world. They have lived in refugee status for 75 years, both abroad and within Palestine itself, without the right to return to their regions of origin or even to move freely within their own country.
Palestinians have the right to resist the illegal occupation, the expulsion from their homes, and the chronic violence to which they are subjected.
We, writer and journalist Cassiana Pizaia, and analyst and journalist Vinícius Sgarbe, produced a micro-documentary about Jenin over a year ago, following two trips to the Middle East.
