Government leader () in and pre-candidate for re-election, , 75, is one of the president’s closest allies. He was considered to be the candidate for the PT’s Palácio do Planalto, in 2018, until he gave up after .
This Thursday (18), Wagner was (), this time related to investigations into . The senator was contacted through his advisors, but had not commented until the publication of the report.
Born in , he studied civil engineering at PUC-RJ (Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro), but built his political career in Bahia.
A union leader at the Camaçari petrochemical complex, he was monitored by the regime’s information services. The name of the current PT member also appears in a 1975 document from the now-defunct Security and Information Division. The report cited political activism and contraindicated hiring Wagner for an internship position.
“Records ideological political antecedents. Element belonging to the Communist Party of Brazil. Cited in testimony by several subversives as a PUC militant [do Rio de Janeiro]. Contraindicated by this division to do an operator internship at the Landulpho Alves Refinery”, says the text.
The current senator was president of Sindiquímica, a union of chemical and petrochemical workers in Bahia, and participated in the founding of the PT and CUT (Central Única dos Trabalhadores) in the state.
He served for three terms, between 1991 and 2003. In the Legislature, he is considered a moderate politician with the capacity for dialogue. Rival in his state, Antonio Carlos Magalhães, the ACM, as he was known, described him in 2002 as a “politician”.
The defeat of Carlism in Bahia, by the way, is the main asset of Wagner’s electoral record. It happened in 2006, when he defeated Paulo Souto, then in the PFL, in the first round of the dispute for state government. Wagner governed Bahia for two terms, from 2007 to 2014, and was succeeded by , also from PT.
The current leader of the Senate was also minister of Labor and Institutional Relations in Lula’s first terms and of Defense and Civil House during the (PT) administration.
In 2005, at the height of the monthly salary crisis, Wagner took over the government’s political coordination at the request of the PT member. Years later, in 2018, he was Lula’s favorite to lead the presidential ticket when the current president was imprisoned in Curitiba.
Wagner, however, refused. According to a report made to Sheetrepeated in private conversations the phrase: “”. His withdrawal was associated by allies with the fact that he had, shortly before, been the target of Operation Red Card, which investigated suspicions linked to transfers from contractors in the construction and management of Arena Fonte Nova, in Salvador.
The PF stated at the time that the PT member had received R$82 million in bribes and donations. Wagner denied the allegations.
During the operation, 15 watches were seized from the former governor’s apartment, as well as cell phones, computers and documents. The next day, Wagner stated that the watches were replicas purchased in China. “”, he said.
In 2019, the TRF-1 (Federal Regional Court of the 1st Region) annulled the operation. The court decided that the investigation was not within the jurisdiction of the Federal Court, because the resources for the renovation of the stadium came from the state of Bahia, and not from the Union.
Critical of Lava Jato, the senator has also commented on the operation. In an interview with Sheet in 2016, when he was head of Dilma’s Civil House, he stated that the party used tools that were already adopted by other parties and “smeared itself”.
