Law that could favor cartels is approved by the Chamber in the early hours of the morning – 11/30/2023 – Power

In the early hours of a holiday eve in Brasília, the Chamber of Deputies approved a bill that could encourage the formation of cartels in bidding processes by reducing transparency in high-value processes.

The project was voted on after midnight this Thursday (30), in an empty session and without the President of the House, Arthur Lira (PP-AL), who even stated earlier, in front of the plenary, that he would end the session.

Lira was present during votes during the afternoon and early evening, especially on the offshore wind farm proposal, which is part of the energy transition package promoted by him, but which in its text includes a series of tortoises to benefit, for example, the sectors gas and coal, activities with high environmental impact.

The president of the House left Congress on Wednesday night (29), and votes from then on were taken in empty sessions.

Already after midnight, deputies approved not only an urgent request, but also began to deliberate on the merits of a bill that changes the bidding law and which could favor the formation of cartels.

According to the text of the proposal, bids starting at R$1.5 million must be made in a closed manner, which means that offers made during the auction do not need to be disclosed.

The opposite model, the so-called open dispute, allows successive bids that are disclosed, that is, anyone can have access to the value suggested by a company to carry out such an undertaking during the procedure.

According to the text approved by the Chamber, high-value bids must be made in a closed dispute model, in which the proposals are not revealed until the bidding deadline closes.

Bids starting at R$1.5 million “will always be processed using the closed dispute mode”, says the text.

According to experts interviewed on condition of anonymity, this model, applied to high-value projects, favors the formation of cartels, as it reduces transparency and allows informal agreements to be made between large construction companies, for example.

“The closed dispute mode must be an exception to the rule of publicity in the processing of public tenders” argues lawyer Anderson Medeiros Bonfim, specialist in tenders and PhD student in Administrative Law at PUC (Pontifical Catholic University) in São Paulo.

“The reduction in transparency compromises the concomitant and continuous supervision by state control bodies and by society. Therefore, the proposed legislative change that aims to expand, unlike public bids, the hypotheses in which confidential proposals are mandatory tends to encourage illicit especially in larger tenders”, he adds.

The lateness of the schedule was a source of irony, for example, from deputies like Julia Zanatta (PL-SC).

According to the report by deputy Elmar Nascimento (União Brasil-BA), this measure “is consistent with the protection of the public interest, as well as honoring the search for the best proposal for public administration”, despite the decrease in transparency in the method of bidding.

According to the rapporteur, an ally of Arthur Lira, the objective is precisely the “contracting of works or special engineering services”, a sector with a high incidence of irregularities.

Voting took place after midnight on Thursday.

However, much earlier, during the early evening, when the Chamber approved the offshore wind farm project with a series of tortoises that favored polluting sectors, Lira even stated in front of the deputies that she would close the session.

“After this project I will close the session”, stated Arthur Lira at around 7:50 pm, during one of the votes.

The president of the Chamber left the House shortly after 8:30 pm at night, but the session continued, led by vice-presidents and amid protests from deputies, who argued that the agenda should have been closed after the statement made by the man from Alagoas.

The text was even deliberated without the presence of the rapporteur, Elmar Nascimento, according to the deputies present. The huge majority of votes were virtual.

The text ended up being approved by 307 votes and the proposal now goes to sanction. The session was subsequently closed.