Changing the State-owned Companies Law creates very serious risks, says anti-corruption institute

The president of the Instituto Não Aceito Corrupção, the state attorney for the São Paulo Public Ministry Roberto Livianu, believes that changes in the State-Owned Companies Law may generate “very serious risks” for Petrobras by eliminating shields against political interference in the company.

For him, the approval of the law, in 2016, was important for the country for creating mechanisms to protect Brazilian state-owned companies from the “culture of cronyism, nepotism and mismanagement”.

The change proposal was raised by the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Arthur Lira (PP-AL), with the argument that the text puts a stop to the change of command of the company, which has been suffering strong attacks from the government and allies for the high prices of fuels.

Supporters of the change claim that the criteria for appointing directors need to be relaxed to ensure greater agility for government decisions. In the campaign, they have been using terms such as “Republic of Petrobras” or “Petrobras football club” to question the independence of the state-owned company.

“The State-Owned Companies Law emerged from the need to have protection in terms of efficiency in state-owned companies, to protect the management of state-owned companies from the historic culture of cronyism, to protect state-owned companies from nepotism, from mismanagement”, says Livianu.

“Historically, this management was distorted by placing people linked to the governments on duty on the board of directors”, he adds. When he was a member of the Lula government, Lira’s own PP was appointed as guarantor for the then director Paulo Roberto Costa, the first whistleblower of Operation Lava Jato.

Lira had already proposed changes to the law when the government tried to sign consultant Adriano Pires as president of Petrobras, replacing General Joaquim Silva e Luna. Pires withdrew after pressure against his name due to conflict of interests, as he provides services to competitors of the state-owned company.

“You can’t start from the premise that a guy, because he gives advice in a private sector to a private company, he can’t take charge of a public company, because that’s dishonesty”, he said at the time.

Among its main customers, Pires has gas distributors and thermal power generation companies, which are Petrobras customers. As a consultant, he was a supporter of the tortoise included in the Eletrobras privatization law, which determines the purchase of thermal energy installed far from the gas pipeline networks.

Livianu connects the movement to change the law to other legislative initiatives that, in his view, weakened the fight against corruption in Brazil, such as the abuse of authority law, which limited the work of the Public Ministry, and the relaxation of the Ficha Law. Clean.

“We are living a delicate moment, a very fragile situation”, he evaluates. “The anti-corruption agenda is not being honored. The ten measures against corruption were literally crushed by Congress, we had Lava Jato deactivated by the Attorney General of the Republic.”

He argues that laws should only be revised when there is “material fatigue”, that is, when social and behavioral changes make those rules ineffective or meaningless. The State-Owned Companies Act, he argues, is only six years old and would not qualify.

“Faced with the Petrobras episode, it was realized that there was a legal instrument to protect state-owned companies and it was decided to end this law”, he says. “[A lei] it was an achievement of Brazilian society to protect good governance. It’s absurd that six years later they decide to get out of the way.”

For the president of Instituto Não Aceito Corrupção, there is no demand from society for the change proposed by Congress. “The law must not meet the wishes of government officials at the time, it must adjust to the needs of society”, says he, who holds a doctorate in Law from USP.

Livianu defends mobilization against the proposal, which could generate “very serious risks” for state-owned companies. “The law is extremely important for shielding, so that there is no culture of cronyism, so that there is no looting of state-owned companies, so that there is no prevalence of lesser interests.”