The virtues of the Federal Revenue – 03/14/2023 – Elio Gaspari

If and when the group that tried to release the Arabian jewels at the Federal Revenue Service at the Guarulhos airport goes to see “Everything in Everywhere at the Same Time”, the doctors will have a moment of satisfaction when Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh, who took the Oscar for best actress) lands a punch in the mouth of auditor Deirdre, from the American Revenue Service (Jamie Lee Curtis won the statuette for supporting actress).

The film deals with parallel realities in a comedy. The case of the jewels of Arabia deals with parallel realities of the tragic real life of the powers of Brasilia.

The adviser to the minister-admiral thought he could pass the pieces through the customs office in Guarulhos. He did not make it. The minister-admiral thought that going to the auditor who had seized the jewels would settle the matter. Nothing done. Some time later, the lieutenant colonel from Planalto thought he would untangle the jewels and sent a sergeant to Guarulhos. Another auditor refused to release the mime. The sergeant called the lieutenant colonel and explained that his mission was stuck. He offered the auditor his telephone so that he could speak with the powerful lieutenant colonel, the right-hand man of the then President of the Republic. The auditor explained that he didn’t talk on the phone in situations like that.

From the admiral to the lieutenant colonel, including the sergeant, everyone lived a reality, that of the powerful. Revenue auditors, on the other hand, lived the reality of a rigid bureaucracy. She is trained on the example of Revenue Secretary Osiris Lopes Filho, the one who left office in 1994 after fighting the banks and being prevented from collecting the taxes owed by passengers on the plane that transported the four-time world champion team. Or still in the example of Lina Maria Vieira, subjected to a frying process during the Mandarinate of Minister Guido Mantega. The following sentence was hers: “The good taxpayer feels like a sucker”.

The Revenue has more than 10,000 tax auditors, all of whom arrived through competitive examinations and all have a career in the State. In a universe of this size there is everything, but in it Serpico’s Law is in force. Frank Serpico was an NYPD cop who was shot in the face by drug dealers associated with corrupt cops. He denounced the misdeeds of the city’s police and his law reads like this: It is the corrupt police who should fear the honest, not the other way around.

Auditors from Guarulhos stopped the jewels of Arabia because they were tempered in good examples and they are not afraid, they are feared. They follow the rules and rarely speak. When they talk, sometimes they make you sleepy.

It is worth remembering that months before the seizure of the Arabian jewels, a tax chief visited the Planalto to snoop into the lives of the King’s enemies. On at least two occasions, the Revenue’s hierarchs were contacted by powerful parties interested in releasing the jewels. Nothing done. It is an effect of Serpico’s Law.

The parallel reality of the powerful usually prevails. If it weren’t like that, the Arab jewelery group would never have tried to run over the auditors with their wallets.

The jewelery gang is left with the consolation of watching the movie “Everything in Everywhere at the Same Time”.

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