Congressman Beto Preto has until Monday (17th) to close deal in improbity case

Federal deputy for Paraná Beto Preto (PSD) has until Monday (the 17th) to accept or refuse a deal with the Public Prosecutor’s Office (MP). The summons was ordered by the 1st Public Treasury Court of Apucarana (PR) in a case of administrative improbity (misconduct in public office).

As a condition for ending the case, the MP proposes that Preto make restitution for damages and pay a fine of R$ 25,000. In the case, prosecutors point to losses to public coffers caused by a rigged bidding in 2013, in the amount of R$ 127,194.43.

Beto Preto ran the Health portfolio in Paraná during the pandemic. That was when he made his name for the election that took him to Brasília. He is currently on Governor Ratinho Júnior’s list of favorites to succeed him in the Iguaçu Palace. If convicted of an act of improbity, he may have his political rights suspended.

Understanding the case

According to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, Beto Preto, then president of the Vale do Ivaí Intermunicipal Consortium (Cisvir), contributed to a bid-rigging scheme by assisting a criminal organization led by the late businessman Marcelo Cernescu.

The then-president approved a bidding procedure without considering several irregularities. The scheme involved, as the MP maintains, shell companies and the contracting of services considered unnecessary, because they should have been provided directly by the public administration.

Arguments

In the initial petition, prosecutors describe illegalities in the bidding for contracting an object described as “needless [unnecessary], costly and flagrantly illegal.”

Moreover, the elements gathered in the investigation indicate that, to achieve the shady objectives, regardless of the contracting municipality, a similar modus operandi was employed, consisting of a joint effort between public officials and businesspeople of the group to “assemble” bidding processes for contracting an unnecessary, costly and flagrantly illegal object, whose acts bear clear signs of dissimulation.
—Public Prosecutor’s Office initial petition

Worth noting

For the MP, the items in the bidding do not justify hiring a private company, and it is a mere artifice “unequivocally created for the diversion of money from public coffers.”

Deputy Beto Preto even had assets frozen, along with the other defendants. Because of a change in the Administrative Improbity Law approved in 2021, the judge in the case ordered the freeze lifted.