Former Environment Secretary breaks quarantine and goes to COP27 representing company

Maria Beatriz Milliet was Secretary of Biodiversity at the Ministry of the Environment and was even nominated by the ministry to go to COP27, the UN (United Nations) climate conference. Before that, however, she was exonerated on September 29 this year.

This Friday (11), however, just over a month after leaving the post, she was in fact at the event in Egypt – but as a manager of a sugar cooperative.

In addition, Beatriz Milliet was even designated as a representative of the ministry within the advisory council of Iphan (Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional) on October 4, therefore, also after no longer holding any position in the portfolio.

Milliet arrived at the Environment during the administration of former minister Ricardo Salles (PL-SP), now elected federal deputy. As an occupant of a position of trust, she should comply with the quarantine call, a period of six months between leaving public administration and entering the private sector to avoid conflict of interest.

Even so, since October, according to her LinkedIn profile, she has been the sustainability manager at Copersucar, a company that represents the sugar and cane sector and also works with the export of these products.

THE Sheet approached the Ministry of the Environment this Friday, through its press office, to find out if the ministry paid for the ex-secretary’s trip to COP27 or not; whether he considers that there is a conflict of interest and why she was appointed to Iphan even after she was dismissed. There was no response as of the publication of this report.

Copersucar, in turn, stated that the invitation to participate in the event was initially made to the company’s president, Tomás Manzano, who was unable to attend, so he sent Milliet. “Beatriz’s trip to Egypt was fully paid for by Copersucar,” said the cooperative, through its advisory.

The report also contacted Iphan, through its press office, and Beatriz Milliet, through Copersucar and her personal telephone, but received no response.

THE Sheet had access to three complaints about a possible conflict of interest made to the ministry’s ethics commission and also to the CEP (Public Ethics Commission) —the body responsible for monitoring the entire area. According to lawyers, the case may constitute a violation of the law.

“This is a case that may constitute a conflict of interest. The person held a position at the secretary level, and the law is very clear that there is a need for quarantine to carry out activity in the private sector that is minimally correlated with the activity carried out in the private sector. government, which, in my view, seems to be the case”, says Valdir Moyses Simão, lawyer and former minister of the CGU.

He also explains that the former public agent can be held responsible if the case is judged as a conflict of interest and that, even after the quarantine, he could not make use of privileged information obtained while in office to work in the private sector.

Both Simão and Vera Chemin, a constitutional lawyer with a master’s degree in public administration from FGV-SP, state that, in order to occupy a post in the private sector, Milliet would need to have consulted the Public Ethics Commission in advance and could only start working in the area with the approval of the organ.

wanted by Sheet, the CEP said that all its decisions are published on its website. The report consulted all the documents since the ex-secretary’s departure, and there is no mention of her case.

“In the event that the former public agent had not even consulted the CEP or had presented the consultation and the commission rejected her future private activity, the then public agent can indeed be framed in an act of administrative improbity”, says Chemin .

Beatriz Milliet arrived at the Ministry of the Environment in 2019, to be communication director for the Secretariat of Ecotourism under Ricardo Salles.

Days after the then minister resigned amid a corruption scandal linked to logging companies and investigated by the Federal Police, she was appointed special advisor to the new head of the portfolio, Joaquim Leite. She spent a few months in the position and, later that year, was transferred to the head of the Secretariat for Biodiversity.

On July 28 this year, Leite authorized her to go to Egypt for COP27, with expenses paid by the federal government.

At the COP, she was announced as a speaker on the panel on “prospects for bioenergy in Brazil”, organized by the Ministry of the Environment itself, however, as a representative of Copersucar.

Milliet was appointed to IPHAN’s advisory board in early October, when, as Sheetthe Bolsonaro government promoted a reform in the body and excluded its enemies from it.

She was nominated for the title and, as her alternate, was chosen Cristiane Lemos Batista de Freitas, who was exonerated from the Environment even earlier, on August 31 of this year.

The report had access to a letter from the institute asking the ministry for new nominations for the posts, but, so far, there are no new appointments in the Official Gazette of the Union.

Freitas was director of environmental education reporting to Milliet for just over five months. The role caused revolt among colleagues because they understood that she had no experience in the area. Previously, she held positions at the Ministry of Women, Family and Human Rights and Citizenship.

_{The Planeta em Transe project is supported by the Open Society Foundations.}