Former Abin director did not fly a drone, as PF points out – 03/10/2024 – Power

The former director of Abin (Brazilian Intelligence Agency) investigated by the PF (Federal Police) for alleged espionage against the then governor of Ceará and now Minister of Education, Camilo Santana (PT), did not pilot the drone nor was he in the state on the date of what happened.

Federal Police investigation investigating the alleged existence of a “parallel Abin” in the Jair Bolsonaro (PL) government states that Paulo Magno de Melo Rodrigues Alves was caught flying a drone near the official residence of the Ceará government, in 2021.

Contrary to what the PF points out, authorities who followed the unfolding of the episode told the Sheet that the person piloting the drone was an intelligence officer who had been relocated from Brasília and an Abin employee assigned to the local superintendency.

Initially, the duo was approached by the palace guard because it was a security area where the presence of drones is not allowed. In a second moment, however, the police checked the car’s license plate and they identified themselves as Abin agents.

The two intelligence officers stated that they did not know that they were close to the Abolition Palace, and that the flight was only so that the Fortaleza servant could be instructed how to use the equipment.

In a petition filed on January 25, lawyers for the former director of Abin state that the PF’s information that he was caught near the official residence of the Ceará government in 2021 is not true.

“The petitioner is not an Abin drone pilot, he doesn’t even know how to fly this device and he also doesn’t have a license. In fact, Paulo Magno wasn’t in Ceará at the time when such an episode would have occurred”, says the piece, to which the report had access .

The petition presented to the STF (Supreme Federal Court) is signed by lawyers Ticiano Figueiredo, Pedro Ivo Velloso, Franciso Agosti and Marcelo Neves.

“Paulo Magno does not fly, nor has he ever flown any drone, whether in Ceará or anywhere else. Such mistaken information provided by the PF leads the Judiciary — and, after the aforementioned news, society as well — into error, causing serious damage to image and reputation of the petitioner.”

The defense also disputes the statement that Magno was “manager of FirstMile”, the spy program that would have been used by the Bolsonaro administration to spy on political opponents, saying that he did not use the system and did not act as manager of the contract or tool.

Abin is the central point of the PF investigation that began in March last year into the suspicion that the agency, under Bolsonaro’s administration, was used to monitor and persecute rivals. Camilo Santana, a PT member, was an opponent of the old federal administration.

Information from the Federal Police that Magno was piloting the drone was used by STF minister Alexandre de Moraes in the decision that authorized search and seizure operations in January. According to the minister, the episode would prove “the total illegality of the conduct”.

A Sheet He contacted the PF, but the agency said it did not comment on ongoing investigations.

In a statement given to investigators in October, Magno stated that, from the end of 2020 until the beginning of 2022, he held the role of general coordinator of Intelligence Operations at Abin.

He was not questioned at the time about the drone episode because the PF only arrived at this information after a search that took place on that date.

In 2021, Abin opened a PAD (disciplinary administrative proceeding) against the two intelligence officers involved in the case. The case was filed the following year.

In the police report presented to Moraes, it is described that mobile devices seized from Magno contained a file called “Prior Defense – PM.docx”, in which there would be a draft justification to be presented if it were included in the PAD.

The document states that there was no operation plan for monitoring and the disciplinary process is requested to be archived. If the understanding were for its continuity, however, Magno asked for the inclusion of the other Abin managers at the time, including the then general director Alexandre Ramagem, now federal deputy for PL.

“The event, therefore, corroborates the systematic practice of carrying out ‘intelligence operations’ without proper records, with the aim of covering up republican deviation”, wrote PF delegate Daniel Carvalho Brasil Nascimento in his report.

The PF reports produced in this investigation were also contested by the PGR (Attorney General’s Office), showing confidential documents from the investigation to which the Sheet had access.

In December, the deputy attorney general of the Republic, Ana Borges Coêlho Santos, sent Moraes an opinion on the PF’s request for precautionary measures, removal from public positions and parliamentary mandate (in relation to Ramagem), and complained about the quality of the report police officer.

She wrote that the police representation should adequately explain “the need, adequacy and usefulness of the precautionary measures, be accompanied by the results of the steps already taken and, above all, be legible and intelligible”.

And he continued, stating that the PF was requesting the decree of serious measures, such as the removal of the parliamentary mandate, in a piece made up of clippings of the results of the steps already carried out “without even allowing the exact understanding of these extracts from the investigation, since it was not used to the full information already collected is added to the case file”.

Moraes ordered the PF to redo the report and, about a month and a half later, the Attorney General of the Republic, Paulo Gonet, expressed himself in favor of most of the measures requested by the police, but took a stand against some of the main ones, including a search and seizure in a Chamber office and the removal of Ramagem from office.

Such as Sheet revealed last Thursday (7), the PF’s claim that the Bolsonaro government’s alleged illegal sting scheme attempted to link Moraes and Gilmar Mendes to the PCC criminal faction is supported by the interpretation of two speculative paragraphs of a document that would have been produced in the office of a federal deputy.

That same day, a report also showed that the PF requested a search and seizure in the office of a federal deputy, Gilberto Nascimento, even though he claimed to see no evidence of his participation in the episode.

The argument used was that the operation would be for the benefit of the parliamentarian himself, to fully prove his innocence. Moraes denied the search.