Nunes publishes decree that made secretary resign – 10/04/2023 – Panel

After months of freezing, the Ricardo Nunes (MDB) administration published a decree expropriating land in Cidade Tiradentes, in the east zone of São Paulo, which in May was the trigger for the then municipal secretary of Housing, João Farias, to resign .

At the time, as revealed by the Panel, Farias said that he would not sign the decree with the justification that it would benefit a specific company, UsuCampeão, in the Pode Entrar housing project.

Due to the repercussions, the decree was set aside at the time. It ended up being published on September 20th, in the municipality’s Official Gazette.

The measure makes possible a development of 5,000 housing units by the companies UsuCampeão and Sousa Araújo in an area called Vaquejada, in Cidade Tiradentes. The city hall can pay approximately R$1.1 billion to companies for the project.

To participate in Pode Entrar, proposing companies must submit the registration documents for the land on which they intend to build. As part of the area in which UsuCampeão intends to carry out its project is irregularly occupied by low-income families, this would not be possible, which would lead to its disqualification.

Now, with the decree, the portion of the land where the families are located can be separated, making it possible to prepare a specific registration for the unoccupied land, which makes the housing project viable.

What Farias argued is that the publication of a tailor-made decree to make the UsuCampeão project viable would undermine the smoothness of the process, as it would be a benefit that no other company had in Pode Entrar. The rule was that projects that did not meet the minimum requirements would be rejected.

Farias’ main antagonist in the discussion was João Cury, CEO of Cohab, who had been defending the decree internally and who led its approval in the city hall. The processing of the decree, which would normally take place at the Housing Department, took place at Cohab, which outraged Farias at the time.

UsuCampeão is owned by lawyer Alexandre Romano, former PT councilor from Americana (SP) who was arrested in 2015 in Operation Lava Jato.

Close to Romano, Bruno Araújo, former president of the PSDB and former Minister of Cities, had been calling allies at city hall to have the decree published.

In a note to the column in May, he said that he had been working as a professional hired by Labutare, a partner company of UsuCampeão. At the Housing Department, this attempted interference was causing discomfort.

The Nunes administration states, in a note, that the decree “does not remove the conditions of free competition in any housing project developed for the aforementioned location”. It also says that the municipality “did not spend any resources following the decree, since the company, in addition to donating the area, assumed the costs of arranging the area and land regularization.”

“The selection of the proposal was due to the lowest price and generated savings of around R$50 million to the public treasury. The new decree does not exempt the winning proposal from complying with all the process formalities, since there are still procedural steps to be fulfilled by the proponent, which involves licensing the project by Smul [Secretaria Municipal de Urbanismo e Licenciamento] and also by the Municipal Court of Auditors before signing the contract”, he adds.

“If it is unable to meet the requirements, substitute proposals may be called in replacement within the limit of the number of units offered by the winning proposal. The city hall’s objective was precisely to offer the best conditions for the administration, which protects public resources”, he concludes.

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