AGU requests freezing of Jovem Pan’s assets to guarantee compensation

The Federal Attorney General’s Office (AGU) presented to the Federal Court of São Paulo, this Wednesday (6), a request for Jovem Pan’s assets to be frozen as a way of guaranteeing the payment of compensation of R$13, 4 million for collective moral damage.

The AGU’s statement expresses agreement with the request made by the Federal Public Ministry (MPF) within the scope of the public civil action being processed against the broadcaster.

Jovem Pan is accused of “systematically broadcasting disinformative content that encouraged the breakdown of the Brazilian democratic regime and the population’s distrust of national institutions, especially the functioning of the electoral system”.

“In this step, in order to ensure the effectiveness of the measure, the Union requires that the measure of unavailability now requested affects the assets, as well as the values ​​and financial investments of the defendant, which are sufficient to ensure the payment of collective moral damage. ”, says an excerpt from the piece filed by AGU.

In addition to freezing assets, the AGU asks to become part of the active side of the action and highlights that “freedom of expression is not absolute”.

Aided by a technical note from the Social Communication Secretariat of the Presidency of the Republic (Secom), the AGU says that Jovem Pan commentators “defended the seizure of power by the military, the arrest of ministers of the Federal Supreme Court (STF) by the military and the subversion of the social order through civil war.”

Despite agreeing with the MPF, the AGU disagreed with the Ministry on the revocation of the broadcaster’s concessions.

“The Union’s understanding is that, even if the penalty has a legal provision and the seriousness of the broadcaster’s conduct is recognized, the abuses committed by the company must be repaired by other measures, such as the application of the right of reply and compensation for moral damage caused”, said the AGU in a statement.

Finally, the AGU asks that Jovem Pan be obliged to broadcast “informative content about the health of the electoral process produced by the Electoral Court” and present reports proving the broadcasts under penalty of a daily fine of R$100,000.

In the action, the MPF had already made the same request, but with the Union’s obligation to produce and monitor the dissemination of the content.

Earlier this week, after being appointed as a defender of Jovem Pan in the action filed by the MPF, the chief minister of the Attorney General’s Office (AGU), Jorge Messias, denied that the ministry was committed to defending the broadcaster and said having only acted in mediating an agreement, however, as there was no success in the negotiations, Messias warned that the AGU would start acting alongside the MPF against Jovem Pan.

The minister’s speech was due to the publication of a statement attached to the process, on Monday (4), in which the AGU attorneys, Artur Soares de Castro and Silvia Helena Serra, said that “it would be extremely dangerous to the regime itself democratic to assign to any state body the role of evaluating the ‘quality of content’ broadcast by radio or TV stations”.