“I would like to greet the public present in the person of the minister.” Variations of the phrase were heard last week in , during a seminar in which the minister of was the protagonist, not only of the event, but of what was happening more than 9,000 kilometers away, in .
Mendonça, rapporteur of the Master case, which has shaken the Republic since November last year, while receiving guests or participating, depending on the observer, in “Regulation & Investment”, a cycle of debates in the main building of Goethe University.
Before the students, the Bauhaus-style building was occupied by the USA. At the end of World War II, IG Farben, a symbol of German chemical excellence, housed General Dwight D. Eisenhower, commander of the Allied Forces in the United States and future American president. The rotunda where he established his office, today a cafeteria, functioned as a kind of branch of the Pentagon.
“It’s a very symbolic building, full of knowledge and history. I think that, in a way, it somewhat mirrors our objective here”, says Ricardo Campos, director of Dinter, or Diálogos Intercontinentais, the company that organized the meeting. For 16 years at , Campos has been a professor at the institution. One of his specialties is digital legislation, an expertise that accredits him in public and legislative debates.
Campos and Mendonça are friends and teach together in a summer master’s degree at the Goethe Faculty of Law. The idea of ”improving the national public debate” arose in these meetings, “not to have Brazilians talking to each other, as we see in other events, but to exchange knowledge with Germans”.
The lawyer does not mention, but the inflation of international events that allegedly discusses the country overseas is implicit in his speech, as if distancing were necessary. The best known of them, led by the minister’s IDP, in Lisbon, is an annual event that has gained weight, criticism and even a pejorative nickname, Gilmarpalooza.
. He sees his event, in its debut edition, as an “academic meeting”, citing the partnership with Iter, an institute founded by Mendonça, also of a strictly academic nature. The minister was, obviously, one of the attractions of the seminar, but not the only one, says the professor. There was no need to coordinate with the guests.
“I would like to congratulate Minister André Mendonça, our hope in the STF”, said, on the first day, Angela Gandra, Secretary of International Relations at City Hall, in a quick speech inserted at the beginning of the afternoon session.
The guest list for the four days of the event actually balanced names of Brazilians, Germans and characters who live between the two countries. There was an initial impression of a conservative or Bolsonarist bias — in addition to Gandra, the governor of São Paulo, (), the former president of the Central Bank Roberto Campos Neto participated — but there were also ministers from the Luiz Inácio da Silva government, parliamentarians, regulators, executives from German and Brazilian companies and the financial market.
What drew attention even before the decision on Vorcaro was the proximity of some speakers to Mendonça’s pen. The most emblematic case was that of Campos Neto, who the day before spoke in English about central banks.
“He was not the subject of the CPI, the minister acted in accordance with jurisprudence”, says Campos, citing one of the hallmarks of Mendonça’s performance in the STF. Two days later, however, two senior BC employees, remnants of the Campos Neto era at the institution, .
“The event’s schedule dates back to before the case”, reiterates Campos, faced with the inevitable question about conflict of interests. The minister’s interlocutors follow the same line, noting that the minister does not mix socializing and work.
It will be recorded in history, however, that the guest in the space of a few days was in Frankfurt.
Mendonça traveled to Germany knowing that he would have to decide on Vorcaro’s preventive detention. On Saturday (28), . As the deadline expired, , in a discussion about the complex relationship between constitutional courts and parliaments. Alongside , president of the Chamber, the magistrate circumvented the Brazilian institutional crisis.
The minister didn’t seem worried, on the contrary. He even joked about the fact that he had forgotten his document folder in the restaurant of the hotel where he was staying. If the decision about Vorcaro and the “gang” was among the content left behind, Mendonça will have to tell it in his memories one day. The minister has the rule not to give interviews.
As much as possible, he followed the panels in the front row. Skipped the exhibition by Campos Neto and that of Isaac Sidney, president of Febraban (Brazilian Federation of Banks). He thus avoided hearing Sidney’s discussion with executives about the misuse of the Credit Guarantee Fund.
“The report [do caso Master] It was something that happened along the way. For me it was terrible”, says the organizer, laughing. Febraban is one of the sponsors of the event, in a contract signed before the case broke out. “He became a rapporteur much later. So, this relationship is an a posteriori reconstruction.”
On Wednesday (4), Mendonça left the debate room before the end of the first panel and, moments later, returned to being rapporteur. From a distance, he ordered the arrest of Vorcaro and members of the “class” in which the discussion was taking place, based on the content of dialogues extracted from the banker’s cell phone.
The minister would only return to the event the morning of the following day. As if nothing had happened, he greeted speakers and took photos. He did not hide his excitement when he received a Cruzeiro shirt, with an “André” on the back, a gift from federal deputy Sérgio Santos Rodrigues (Podemos-MG), former president of the club.
Mendonça, from Santos, valued the gift noting that the shirt “had no sponsorship”, as an avid football fan would do. He did not agree to receive anything from the event, say advisors. No plane tickets or hotels, adds Campos.
In the wake of the discussion of Vorcaro’s presence in the web of commercial relationships, Mendonça declared on social media that . The remaining 10% goes to tithes, as the minister is a pastor at the Presbyterian Church of Pinheiros, in São Paulo. According to the newspaper O Estado de S.Paulo, Iter earned R$4.8 million in public contracts in just over a year.
“I disagree with you, the minister is not [o ponto] central to the event, he was a guest”, insists Campos. If he wasn’t at the event, Mendonça is already the central point of the country in an election year, contested so far by a candidate with the surname Bolsonaro, from the political group that elevated him to the Supreme Court, and President Lula, , about fraud in the .
A role that the minister, according to interlocutors, promises to face “as a judge”.
