Ex-prisoner in Lava Jato and toucan are crisis pivots in SP – 05/29/2023 – Panel

The backstage behind the departure of João Farias from the Housing Secretariat under the Ricardo Nunes (MDB) administration and the strain on the mayor’s relationship with the Republicans involve former PSDB president Bruno Araújo and lawyer Alexandre Romano, former PT councilor from Americana (SP) who was arrested in 2015 in Operation Lava Jato.

As revealed by the Panel, Farias resigned on Friday (26), after disagreements with the CEO of Cohab, João Cury, and the Secretary of Government, Edson Aparecido. This Monday (29), he made his departure official after meeting with Nunes.

According to the column, the former secretary was bothered to discover a Decree of Public Utility prepared by Cury and Aparecido, directed specifically to a land in Cidade Tiradentes nicknamed Vaquejada, where for decades there has been an irregular occupation by low-income families.

Araújo, former Minister of Cities, who chaired the PSDB between 2019 and January of this year, had been mobilizing allies with the city hall for the decree to be made and published.

Prepared without the participation of the Housing Secretariat, the decree would specifically serve the purpose of making viable an undertaking of 5,000 housing units submitted by the partner companies Usu Campeão, owned by Romano, and Sousa Araújo, to the Pode Dentro program. The city would pay approximately R$ 1.1 billion to companies for the project.

In order to participate in Pode Entra, bidders need to deliver the license plates of the land on which they intend to build. As part of the area in question is occupied irregularly, this would not be possible, leading to the disqualification of the project by Usu Campeão and partners. With the decree, the plot of land where the families are located would be dismembered, making it possible to prepare a specific registration for the unoccupied land, thus making the housing project viable.

The dismembered area would be donated to the city hall by the companies, according to the proposal. On March 27, Usu Campeão sent a letter to Cohab and the Government Secretariat with the same requests that would appear in the draft of the decree in May.

Close to Romano, Bruno Araújo, former president of the PSDB and former Minister of Cities, had been calling allies in City Hall for the decree to be published, which was about to happen before Farias interfered. At the Housing Department, the attempt to interfere was causing discomfort.

In addition to the fact that he was passed over from the discussion of the decree, Farias was irritated with the content and with the fast processing within the city hall.

For him, the decree would give an undue advantage to the project of a specific company that was about to be disqualified, to the detriment of competitors and circumventing the determinations of the public notice of Pode Enter. A request for a Public Utility Decree made by Farias from the same area in Cidade Tiradentes has been stalled for a year in municipal management, awaiting the mayor’s signature after passing through all instances. The new DUP order, led by Cury, covered the same route in two months.

The hidden protagonist of the process, Alexandre Romano, known as Chambinho, was arrested in the Pixuleco 2 operation, suspected of having intermediated Consist Software millionaire contracts with the Ministry of Planning. In exchange, according to the Federal Police, the company was forced to pay a fee, which was then passed on through different channels until it reached the PT.

On the opposite side to Farias, the allegation is that the proposal is the most advantageous for the municipality and that this reading is corroborated by the technical staff of the city hall. Without it, they claim, projects for the area will be more expensive and will not include the donation of the area where the families are located.

In a note, Bruno Araújo says that, as a professional hired by Labutare, a partner company of Usu Campeão, “he defended that the proposal selected by technical criteria by the collegiate itself is the most economically and socially advantageous to the public interest”.

“As a former minister of the area, Bruno Araújo led the national popular housing program and it was his initiative to introduce the land regularization law in force. He professionally provided and provides services to the sector”, he adds.

Usu Campeão is a land regularization company that has a purchase and sale agreement with landowners in Cidade Tiradentes.

In a note, he states that the project in question “was selected for the lowest price for the city hall and was the one that best served the public interest. The qualified proposal presented the property value 18% lower than the average proposed by the other competing companies.”

“For the acquisition of the land where the houses will be built, a method provided for by law called friendly expropriation was used. The City of São Paulo will not incur any cost or burden for the expropriation”, he completes.

Construction company Sousa Araújo, in turn, says that it was invited to participate in Pode Enter by Labutare Construtora e Incorporadora.

“Once we had the project in hand, we gathered all the documentation requested by the public notice and presented the project. It was qualified and approved and at this moment we are waiting for the City Hall’s decision on the friendly expropriation proposed, as well as the conclusion of the analyzes and approval of the projects”, he says.

“From what we understand from the public notice, only through the issuance of the execution permit that we will be able to advance to the next phase of the project to sign the contracts and start the works. We do not know Mr. Bruno Araújo and we do not have any commercial relationship with him “, concludes.