Ibama annuls act that barred R$ 29 billion in environmental fines – 03/25/2023 – Environment

Ibama (Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Natural Resources) annulled the Bolsonaro government order that could lead to the annulment of BRL 29.1 billion in environmental fines.

Last Tuesday (21), the Attorney General’s Office (AGU) approved an opinion allowing the institute to charge these fines.

A Sheet had access to a dispatch from Ibama from early February —more than a month before the AGU demonstration—, in which the institute annulled the measure of the Bolsonaro government and requested the review of all measures resulting from it and also the determination of the impact that the measure had.

In 2022, the then president of the body, Eduardo Bim, made a maneuver and published an order in which he asserted the understanding that a series of fines applied were invalid under the argument of prescription.

He annulled stages of environmental infringement processes, invalidating the notification of suspects by public notice for the presentation of final allegations —a method commonly used by agency agents to subpoena those who owed a fine.

In practice, by canceling this step, Bim made these processes prescribe.

Since the transition of President Lula’s (PT) government, the environmental working group, integrated by the current president of the institute, Rodrigo Agostinho, had already stated that it would look for ways to reverse this measure.

On the first day of the new government, a published decree already paved the way for the overthrow of Bim’s understanding, by revalidating the notification by edict for final allegations.

The order published on February 2 “renders no effect” to the Bolsonaro administration’s maneuver and reverses the interpretation “which recognized the nullity” of the fines, as well as a series of guidelines given by the body as a result of that measure.

The document is signed by Jair Smith, then deputy president of Ibama, since Agostinho had not yet been named — despite the fact that the two were already acting together in charge of the entity at that time.

In addition, it advised all Ibama teams to stop following the understanding given by the Bolsonaro administration and resume charging fines.

The decision also creates a working group to review administrative decisions “taken in disagreement with legal precepts, legal guidelines and historical theses” throughout the Bolsonaro government.

It also determines that analyzes be carried out to find out the estimated impact that Eduardo Bim’s maneuver had.

According to the G1 portal, Ibama also informed the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office of this annulment, the body that opened an investigation into Bim’s maneuver, even before the AGU demonstration.

Last year, the Sheet revealed that the offensive for the invalidation of environmental fines was added to other initiatives of the Eduardo Bim administration at Ibama.

On March 13, 2022, a report showed that a document from the agency itself pointed to the risk of prescription of more than 5,000 notices of environmental infraction drawn up in the Bolsonaro government, due to the inability to process the records for submission to trial.

On the 30th of the same month, another report reported that an order signed by Bim annulled stages of environmental infringement processes and expanded the possibilities of statute of limitations for fines.