Change in State-Owned Law goes against public interest, says anti-corruption institute

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President of Instituto Não Accept Corruption, São Paulo Public Prosecutor Roberto Livianu said this Wednesday (14) that the approval of a change in the State-Owned Companies Law is worrying and defended that the Senate overturn the measure.

The bill, approved by the Chamber on Tuesday night (13), reduces to 30 days the quarantine of nominees for president and director of public companies and may benefit former minister Aloizio Mercadante, nominated for the presidency of BNDES (National Bank of Economic and Social Development).

The institute has already started working with senators to stop the changes. “It seems to me that it was not a good step. They are changes to please casual and opportunistic interests, which go against the grain of the public interest”, says Livianu.

He compared the way the project was approved —at an accelerated pace and without debate with society— to the proposal to “pass the cattle” to loosen environmental rules, made by former Minister of the Environment Ricardo Salles in the midst of the pandemic.

“It was a quick approval, in the week of the World Cup finals, in the midst of the transition of government, in the good style of ‘passing the cattle'”, he said.

Livianu was also critical of the proposals to change the law made by the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Arthur Lira (PP-AL), in the midst of the crisis over the change in command of Petrobras in the first half.

At the time, Lira questioned the difficulty the government had in appointing consultant Adriano Pires as president of Petrobras, owner of a consultancy that provides services to clients of the state-owned company and has a strong lobby in Congress.

“The State-Owned Companies Law was a package insert, an important measure that preserves the public interest and a vaccine in relation to the culture of cronyism”, he says. “It aims to protect the efficiency of state-owned companies from these political injunctions, so that they are not seen as political currency for accommodating companions.”

For the Goldman Sachs bank, the easy victory of the change proposal may be an indicator that the new government will have enough political capital to make further adjustments to the law, which increases uncertainty about the company in the long term.

“We see the State-owned Law as one of the layers of protection against potential interventions in the company”, wrote analysts Bruno Amorim, João Frizo and Guilherme Costa Martins.

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