Interview: Amazon is destroyed by criminal organization – 03/04/2023 – Environment

An immersion in the fight against environmental crime and its ramifications by the state machine. This is “Jungle: Loggers, Gold Miners and Corrupts in the Lawless Amazon”, a book that reconstructs the trajectory of delegate Alexandre Saraiva in the ten years in which he was superintendent of the Federal Police in Roraima, Maranhão and Amazonas.

“I put in the book what I can prove by A plus B. I avoided conclusions. I left that to the reader”, says Saraiva in an interview with Sheet about the publication, which hits bookstores this first week of April.

Organized in the form of a thriller, the narrative goes through 17 PF operations, following the reasoning of those who chase the bandit. The report, however, begins with the outcome, Saraiva’s clash with the then Minister of the Environment Ricardo Salles, in 2021, which led to both losing their positions.

In the middle of the divergence were 226,000 m³ of illegal timber, brought together in Operation Handroanthus. It was the largest seizure of its kind in history, with enough logs to fill 7,500 trucks.

Salles insisted that it was a legal product. Saraiva gathered evidence to denounce the minister for being suspected of being part of a criminal organization. Among the details in the book is the backstage of how, in the midst of that arm wrestling, the military suddenly abandoned the operation.

“What the Armed Forces did there, I, with ten years in the Amazon, had not seen”, says the delegate, who was transferred to Volta Redonda (RJ) after the episode. In the last elections, he tried to be elected federal deputy for the PSB in Rio de Janeiro.

What is unexpected for readers, however, is in the subtleties of the reports that interconnect, throughout the chapters, environmental destruction, not with the usual villain, agribusiness, but with organized crime, in its worst facets.

“The destruction of the Amazon does not happen in the way and for the reasons that common sense makes us believe”, says Saraiva. “For a long time, it has been promoted by a very sophisticated criminal organization, with tentacles in the state and federal governments and even abroad. There is an Italian mafia.” Read the main excerpts from the interview below.

The book brings new details of some already known facts. I am referring, for example, to the case of the Army in Operation Handroanthus, which first tried to take credit for the biggest seizure of wood in history, and then said that it had no way of removing the logs and even called back the security personnel. of the load. But the reasons are not in the book. Mr. never found out what they were? I have put in the book what I can prove by A plus B. I have avoided inferences. I leave that to the reader. I think intelligent people who are interested in reading will see that there is a moment when the switch turns.

The son who was beautiful suddenly became unwanted, and everyone wanted to get away from that apprehension as soon as possible.

I had already worked with the Armed Forces and had excellent experiences with the Army. What the Armed Forces did there, I, with ten years in the Amazon, had not seen. They abandoned the Federal Police in the middle of an extremely hostile environment, whether from the point of view of the forest or from the point of view of the type of criminal that was there.

There was a meeting at the Amazon Council. They asked me what we would do with the wood and I said I had a beautiful solution and an ugly one. I preferred to remove the wood and use it in infrastructure works for the needy population.

Only those who had the structure to withdraw were the Army. Everyone agreed. I left there thinking the problem was solved. I’m used to dealing with people who keep their word.

But a meeting of the Military Command of the Amazon came, and they said that, after some calculations, they saw that, to remove all the wood, it would take ten years. I couldn’t take it. I turned and said: “You will forgive my frankness, but it is not possible for those semi-literate criminals to do this in two months and the Army to take ten years”.

Nobody thought of turning to Vice President Mourão, who was coordinator of the National Council for the Legal Amazon? Mourão was at the meeting that decided. If it was up to him, it would happen. On a call to the Northern Command, I remembered that I had been arranged with General Mourão, and the answer was that the Amazon Council was a political channel. By the hierarchical route they had no order.

In the end, the ugly solution prevailed, the wood was abandoned, but you inserted metal rods into the logs in an attempt to stop processing. Did you ever find out the final destination of that giant seizure? Look, I wanted to be a little fly to see when they put the wood in the saw. All the tests we did showed that the saw broke.

But why did I get to this point? Because I felt like I was going to miss the stop. It was the Army pulling out, it was Ricardo Salles’ interview in O Estado de S.Paulo [dizendo que a PF estaria criando uma situação de instabilidade jurídica e que as madeireiras iriam quebrar]. You start to see that you are getting abandoned. So, I thought: “I might even lose, but they won’t win”.

On the subject of the interview, Mr. reacted by responding in Folha. In the book, Mr. mentions that he always tried to talk to everyone and be a technician, because that guaranteed him the position to carry out crime-fighting operations. In this press response, Mr. Was it technical or emotional? I went both. Salles questioned an ongoing police operation, and I had 50 men and women in the middle of the jungle working hard, in a precarious environment. It would lose all leadership if I didn’t give a blunt answer. That was the first point.

The second point was to show that there was resistance within the state bureaucracy.

While Salles was giving interviews that were absolutely inconvenient, to say the least, I lacked materiality, especially as a minister. But when he goes to the apprehension site, meets with the criminals, organizes a strategy to circumvent the inspection, he crossed the line, and I did what had to be done.

I sent the crime news [contra Ricardo Salles] for the STF. I was very conservative. If I went back in time, I would have put more people. Things happened later and doubts became certainties.

Mr. It doesn’t say in the book, but we get the feeling, in the work as a whole, that the State, in the Bolsonaro government, was facilitating environmental crime in the Amazon. Is this a reader’s impression or was there something strange? There was, yes. Change myself as a superintendent, at that time [abril de 2021], it was weird. Then, delegate Franco Perazzoni was removed from another operation, delegate Rubens Lopes, who also worked in the operation, and Thiago Leão, who took my place in the investigation.

We even asked ourselves who we had bumped into in this wooden scheme to have this reaction. I had never seen a criminal organization overthrow a PF superintendent. This is unprecedented. How unprecedented is the virulence, the hatred, the persecutory resentment that exist to this day.

I’m going to say something that I haven’t said publicly before: there is still a pocket, a Bolsonarist cell, in the Federal Police, and in a strategic position.

The Corregidor General was appointed by the Bolsonaro government and has a mandate. This, in a way, maintains disciplinary control over a good part of the staff. That’s a problem with the Federal Police — at least it’s a big problem for me. My disciplinary procedures are still there. They never close. They created an unprecedented court of exception. There were dozens of procedures.

In the Internal Affairs of Rio de Janeiro, the state in which I work today, the opinions were unanimously archived, due to the lack of disciplinary misconduct.

The Bolsonaro government has raised deficiencies in the environmental issue to an apex, but the problems are previous, aren’t they? The book details that politics, the judiciary, the economy and the structure of environmental agencies are intertwined with common crime. That’s exactly it. The destruction of the Amazon does not happen in the way and for the reasons that common sense makes us believe. We still have the mindset of the 1980s. Deforestation, soy. Deforestation, cattle. It’s not like that anymore. I repeat that, but people want to blame agribusiness anyway.

I don’t think agribusiness is innocent, but we have to know where the issue is. After the operations we carried out to combat logging, there was a drastic reduction in deforestation in Inpe’s monitoring [Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais]. The relationship between business with wood and deforestation becomes clear when we carry out a scientific analysis.

This wood is financing politicians in Brasilia. I saw. I went into accountability. He had investigated my donation to a politician who defended him at the Ministry of Justice. A governor of Roraima made a law prohibiting the destruction of mining rafts, which only serve for crime. It’s like making a law prohibiting the destruction of cocaine labs. That was grounds for automatic dismissal, but in our culture, environmental crime is still a minor crime.

Mr. talks about various logging operations, but violence escalates in the book when he talks about gold. It is even the chapter that shows the importance of the indigenist Bruno Pereira. Is the mining crime more violent or is it that particular region, the Javari Valley? There is violence in wood, but gold is like cash. It’s hard for someone to rob a wooden raft to steal the lumber thief’s timber. With gold it is different. If you manage to catch it, the profit is very high and fast.

Bruno warned about the invasion of the garimpeiros’ rafts and a terrible environmental disaster, with the spill of mercury in the region. I don’t know how they’re going to solve that.

The point is that when they talk about criminal organizations, we tend to think of firearms and drugs, but they have a strong impact on environmental crime. Criminal organization goes where it has easy money. For some time now, the destruction of the Amazon has been promoted by a very sophisticated criminal organization, with tentacles in the state and federal governments and even abroad. There’s an Italian mafia.

Here in Brazil, only the Federal Supreme Court has the institutional stature to face this criminal organization. Society needs to be aware of what is happening. The challenge of the current generation, and I would say, the legacy of our generation, is the preservation of the Amazon.

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Alexandre Saraiva, 53

Born in São Gonçalo (RJ), he graduated in law from UFF (Fluminense Federal University), with a doctorate in environmental sciences and sustainability in the Amazon from Ufam (Federal University of Amazonas). He has been a Federal Police delegate for 19 years. From 2011 to 2021, he was regional superintendent in three states of the Legal Amazon (Roraima, Maranhão and Amazonas).

_{The Planeta em Transe project is supported by the Open Society Foundations.}