Bankers sign manifesto for democracy because banks lost BRL 40 billion with Pix, says Civil House minister

The Chief Minister of the Civil House, Ciro Nogueira, attributed this Tuesday (26) the adhesion of bankers to the manifesto against President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) to the loss of revenue due to Pix.

Nogueira reacts to the “Letter to Brazilians and Brazilians in Defense of the Democratic State of Law”, which has almost 3,000 signatures, including bankers.

The text was a response to the coup threats of the Chief Executive.

“If you make someone lose [R$] 40 billion a year to benefit Brazilians, it is not surprising that the injured party signs a manifesto against you”, said the minister, on Twitter.

Nogueira says that institutions stopped collecting more than R$30, R$40 million from transfers, which were charged with Pix.

He also says that the beneficiaries of the new system will also sign a “manifesto”, supporting Bolsonaro in the elections in October. Today the president is in second place in polls of voting intentions. In Datafolha, Bolsonaro appears 19 points behind former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT).

In addition, the minister says that bankers can be critical of the government and the president, since they will not suffer retaliation, because the Central Bank is independent.

“Now the bankers can even sign manifestos against the president because they know they will not be persecuted,” he said.

Last year, the autonomy of the Central Bank was approved. The change aimed to shield the institution from political interference, since terms of office can be renewed only once and do not coincide with that of the Chief Executive.

As shown in Mônica Bergamo’s column, bankers Roberto Setubal and Pedro Moreira Salles, co-chairs of Itaú Unibanco’s board of directors, and Candido Bracher, former president of the financial institution and now also a member of its board, signed the manifesto in defense of democracy that is being organized by the USP Law School and by entities and representatives of civil society.

The document is also endorsed by artists, jurists and personalities such as Chico Buarque de Hollanda, singer Arnaldo Antunes, Father Júlio Lancelotti, former soccer player Walter Casagrande, former president of the Central Bank Arminio Fraga, the former governor of Espírito Santo Santo Paulo Hartung, economist José Roberto Mendonça de Barros and former president of the Credit Suisse bank in Brazil José Olympio Pereira.

Referring to the elections, the document says that “instead of a civic party, we are going through a moment of immense danger to democratic normality, risk to the institutions of the Republic and insinuations of contempt for the results of the elections. question the fairness of the electoral process and the democratic rule of law so hard won by Brazilian society. Threats to other powers and sectors of civil society and the incitement to violence and the rupture of the constitutional order are intolerable”.

The document says that “dictatorship and torture belong to the past” and also bears the signature of several former ministers of the Federal Supreme Court (STF), such as Sepúlveda Pertence, Carlos Ayres Britto and Sydney Sanches.

It will be read on August 11, in the Pátio das Arcadas do Largo de São Francisco, by former STF minister Celso de Mello. The date marks the foundation of legal courses in Brazil.