Who is the group that tries to manage BRL 3.4 billion in transmission – 08/11/2023 – Market

The genesis consortium, disqualified on the 3rd of the first mega auction of energy transmission lines by the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT), is made up of unknown companies in the segment, which do not have official websites or payroll.

The leading company, The Best Car Transportes de Cargas Nacionais e Internacional Ltda., which accounts for 92.52% of the consortium, has a billionaire share capital and a single partner. Paulo Cesar dos Santos, 53, lives in Palhoça (SC), where he manages two other companies, one in Rio and another in São Paulo.

With no permanent employees and headquartered in Betim (MG), The Best operates in cargo transportation by all modes: road, air, rail and sea, serving mainly agribusiness and “a little bit of the financial market abroad”, according to its founder.

Paulo Cesar dos Santos spoke to the Sheet before Aneel’s decision is released. He was sought after the decision for disqualification, but did not respond or answer.

The group filed an administrative appeal against the decision of Aneel’s Special Tender Commission (National Electric Energy Agency), which may or may not uphold the decision taken on the 3rd. who will make the final decision.

Who presented Paulo with the possibility of working in the energy sector was businessman Denis Rildon, from Rio Grande do Norte, who presented himself as CEO of the consortium in a press conference held at B3, in São Paulo, after the auction.

The two met, according to Paulo, about five years ago, at a business partner. “Sometimes he needs a resource, something and I got him out there,” she said, without elaborating.

Rildon is not known in the electrical sector either. In the 2020 municipal election, he was even a PSDB candidate for the prefecture of Ouro Branco (RN), but withdrew from the candidacy after being challenged at the request of the Public Ministry.

Denis Rildon was convicted by the Justice of the Federal District in 2011 for embezzlement. The penalty was set at one year and four months in open prison and a fine. The prison sentence was converted into the provision of services.

According to the MP’s complaint, he embezzled money from the company he was an employee of, by simulating material purchases. The company’s owner told the court that he had received R$52,000 in purchases for which he had spent R$860,600. The difference would have been pocketed by the former employee.

In 2016, a sentence by the Federal District’s Criminal Execution and Alternative Measures Court imposed the extinction of the entrepreneur’s punishment. In the decision, substitute judge Ângelo Pinheiro Fernandes de Oliveira wrote that “the convict is poor in the legal sense” and released him from paying the costs of the process.

Denis Rildon was reached at a telephone number provided by Paulo Cesar, but did not answer or respond to the interview request.

In the Electoral Justice of Rio Grande do Norte, the Electoral MP considered that he was ineligible because they had not yet eight years since the 2016 statute of limitations.

In the technical note in which it concluded for the disqualification of the Genesis Consortium, Aneel’s Special Tender Commission considered that the group did not prove the technical, legal and economic conditions to comply with the rules set forth in the auction notice.

In the 24-page opinion, the commission points out a series of questions that were not explained by the group or had insufficient answers, such as the classification of The Best as a micro-enterprise, which would limit it to annual revenues of BRL 360,000.

The balance sheet presented by the company to Aneel, however, points to revenues of R$ 800 million to R$ 1 billion between 2020 and 2022. Only almost a month after the auction and after being questioned by the commission did the company request a new social framework.

Also according to the government agency, the company has suspended activity at the Finance Department of Minas Gerais. In another point considered unexplained by Aneel, the consortium delivered the paperwork required by the notice using the logo of a company called The Best Transportes, Importação e Exportação, headquartered in Itaqui (RS).

The leader of the consortium would have informed only that she was not related to the namesake and that she would adopt another visual identity.

In the technical analysis, Aneel saw problems in the type of contract closed by the consortium with the construction company that would be responsible for executing the transmission lines and also in the profile of that company.

Correa Energia e Construção is headquartered in Belém (PA) and, to prove its experience in the sector, it presented contracts with three concessionaires. “The three contracts forwarded are, however, all of small value and limited in scope to works on electricity distribution networks.”

Paulo Cesar dos Santos, owner of The Best, told Sheet be convinced that it would prove that, despite being new to the area, they had the ability to assemble a competent team. “AND [uma preocupação] unfounded, it does not exist. I’m not going to put good money on top of bad money,” she said.

In a press conference after the auction, Denis Rildon said that the other participants in the consortium would not yet be “strategically exposed at the moment” and that a partner who was in the United States would be involved.

“We have a very vast knowledge of this segment and we know the bidding process”, he said.

“We are a lean group, we entered with a consortium composed of two companies, a construction company and an international transport company, but around that there is a very experienced group. We have engineers, some retired from large companies, and who have more than 25 thousand kilometers of transmission lines.”

Rildon also declined to answer where the financing would come from to play the two lots purchased by the group. To the SheetPaulo Cesar, from The Best, said he would work with his own capital.

According to Aneel’s technical note, two engineers were hired through Correa Energia ee Construção and their records with the class council proved the experience of both in the construction and assembly of electricity transmission facilities.

In the consortium’s contract with Correa, of the EPCM type (acronym for Engineering, Procurement and Construction Management), Aneel considered that there was a lack of a clear way of how the construction company would be remunerated, linking the payment to the concession’s revenues.

“The contract signed by the genesis consortium induces the perception that, in practice, the contractor is more like a partner than a company contracted to implement the undertakings.”

Correa, according to the group informed the bidding committee, “does not have branches and does not have an electronic address on the internet and that operates with its own staff of only one administrative assistant and a ‘financial sector’, in addition to the owner-partner, hiring outsourced labor”.

In addition to The Best, the Genêsis Consortium also included the construction company Entec, from São Luis (MA), with 7.48% of the contract. Like the leader of the group, the company from Maranhão also has no employees or an active page on the internet.

According to the commission’s technical note, the two companies “operate only with outsourced employees”, which, for the agency, leads to the conclusion that both do not have their own employees.

Aneel identified the inflow of significant amounts of money in November and December of last year, which increased Entec’s equity. This indicator is important because the economic qualification of the companies considers the liquidity of the companies.

The company told the government agency that the amounts referred to service provision contracts. The invoices, however, were not attached “There is no possibility of proving ownership of the assets based on the data contained in the documents presented”, wrote the members of the Special Tender Commission.

Consórcio Genêsis won lot 1, for Bahia and Minas Gerais, with an estimated investment of R$ 3.16 billion and the second most important in the auction. The offer was worth R$ 174 million (discount of 66.18%). It also made the best bid for lot 8, worth R$ 19.5 million, which includes the metropolitan region of Recife (PE), with a discount of 55.35%.

If the disqualification of the consortium is maintained, the runners-up will be called to take over the lots.