IBAMA (Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources) admitted to the PGR (Attorney General’s Office) that an internal change, instituted in 2020, increased the risk of prescription of fines applied to environmental violators.
A June 2020 ordinance, signed by the body’s president, Eduardo Fortunato Bim, established a national case investigation team, which changed the way in which infraction notices are analyzed. Servers started to work in processes from anywhere in the country, and not only in their areas of capacity.
“Without the collaboration of the states, especially to nominate officials for instruction and judgment, the operational capacity of the team will be reduced and, thus, the prescriptive risk increases”, said IBAMA in a document sent to the PGR’s Environment Chamber on the last day. 12.
The statute of limitations risk factor adds to a list of other measures in the environmental area of the Jair Bolsonaro government (PL) that increased the possibility of impunity for environmental offenders, including those fined already during the president’s administration.
On March 13, the Sheet revealed that a document from Ibama itself points to the risk of prescription of more than 5,000 infraction notices drawn up in 2020, the second year of Bolsonaro’s term. The amount is equivalent to half of the records drawn up that year.
Based on the report, the Environment Chamber of the PGR demanded explanations from the Minister of the Environment, Joaquim Leite.
The letter was sent by the coordinator of the collegiate, sub-attorney general Juliano Baiocchi, who gave the minister ten days to present explanations about the risk of prescribing fines and about previous recommendations made by the PGR chamber.
The answer was sent by the president of IBAMA. A technical note was prepared by the Superintendence for Investigation of Environmental Infractions.
The PGR collegiate had already recommended changes to the functioning of environmental conciliation, a step created in 2019 to weaken the inspection carried out by environmental agencies. This weakening is a flag of Bolsonaro, before and after being elected president.
Conciliation is another risk factor of impunity for offenders. The measure caused an accumulation and paralysis of processes, which increases the loss of procedural deadlines and the consequent statute of limitations.
A cross-reference made by the Sheet, published on March 27, showed the existence of more than BRL 1 billion in fines from Ibama, applied in 2020, without referral to environmental conciliation sectors. The list includes 28 loggers charged with illegally harvesting logs from the Amazon, in addition to hundreds of loggers, two steel mills, a railroad and a state-owned company.
In its response to the PGR, Ibama admitted that “adjustments to the procedures” of conciliation are necessary and that there was a “shock in the procedural management, sometimes affecting the ideal flow”.
“What is happening, at this moment, is the consolidation of a stage and the beginning of a procedural model based on the computerization of the entire process, and which does not find an easy transition given the level of lag that existed”, said the agency. The conciliation seeks to make the process more effective, and the achievement of goals is sought, he said.
In addition to the establishment of a national team of instruction and environmental conciliation, a third measure by Ibama contributes to the prescription of processes. The president of the agency, in an order dated March 21, changed an understanding and annulled stages of environmental infringement proceedings. Bim considered the notification of infringers by public notice to present closing arguments invalid.
The measure, revealed in a report published on March 30, impacts thousands of processes, according to IBAMA technicians. The procedural acts to be annulled become invalid to interrupt the statute of limitations, as stated in the document issued by the president of IBAMA.
A fourth measure caused a “significant reduction in the effectiveness of the environmental sanctioning administrative process”, as the PGR Environment Chamber pointed out in a technical note prepared in September 2021.
The members of the collegiate refer to a joint normative instruction from the MMA (Ministry of the Environment), Ibama and ICMBio (Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation), dated April 2021, which regulates the functioning of environmental conciliation centers.
“This concentration of powers/competencies in the hands of a single public agent – who has no deadline, for example, for analyzing the report prepared by the environmental agent – can harm the regular exercise of police power by environmental inspection agents,” he said. the technical note, which suggests a readjustment of the procedures defined in the normative instruction.
Ibama’s response to the PGR collegiate did not provide detailed explanations about the notes made by members of the MPF (Federal Public Ministry).
Ibama pointed to a “continuous reduction in the number of civil servants” to compose the national process instruction team. “The reduction was, to some extent, due to the superintendents who relocated servers to local demands.”
The environmental agency held a public tender to reinforce the staff and “will try other alternatives to optimize the rite of the sanctioning process”, according to the response to the PGR. Among these alternatives are changes in a 2008 decree and in the normative instruction criticized by the Environment Chamber. The agency does not say what changes these will be.
The president of IBAMA was even removed from office for 90 days, by determination of the Federal Supreme Court (STF), due to suspicions of favoring the smuggling of wood abroad. Bim was investigated in Operation Akuanduba, launched by the PF in May 2021. He returned to office in August 2021.
Bim, in an order, waived the need for authorization to export wood. The STF overturned the effects of the order.
The then Minister of the Environment, Ricardo Salles, was also investigated for suspected crimes in the shipment of wood from the Amazon to the US and Europe. He resigned from his post the month after the police operation. Salles was responsible for appointing Bim to the position of president of IBAMA.
