BRAZIL: SELECTIVE LEAK ...

Brazil’s Chief Prosecutor, Deltan Dallagnol, Lied When He Denied Leaking to the Press, Secret Chats Reveal

https://theintercept.com/2019/08/29/deltan-dallagnol-car-wash-leaks-brazil/

Secret Brazil Archive

Part 9

The top Car Wash prosecutor leaked sensitive information to a Brazilian reporter with motives that could jeopardize the task force’s convictions.

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BRAZIL’S CHIEF PROSECUTOR overseeing its sweeping anti-corruption probe, Deltan Dallagnol, lied to the public when he vehemently denied in a 2017 interview with BBC Brasil that his prosecutorial task force leaked secret information about investigations to achieve its ends.

In fact, in the months preceding his false claim, Dallagnol was a participant in secret chats exclusively obtained by The Intercept, in which prosecutors plotted to leak information to the media with the goal of manipulating suspects by making them believe that their indictment was imminent even when it was not, in order to intimidate them into signing confessions that implicated other targets of the investigation.

Critics of the so-called Car Wash investigation — which imprisoned dozens of Brazilian elites including, most significantly, the center-left ex-President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva when he was leading all polls to win the 2018 presidential election (ultimately won by Jair Bolsonaro after Lula was barred) — long suspected that the prosecutorial team was responsible for numerous media reports that revealed sensitive details about suspects targeted by the investigations.

Dallagnol and his team always publicly, even angrily, denied this. Yet the Secret Brazil Archive obtained by The Intercept, which we began reporting on June 9, contains numerous instances of the prosecutorial team planting exactly the sorts of leaks they repeatedly denied involvement in — often with motives that rendered the outcome legally questionably, if not outright illegal.

One illustrative example came relatively early in the investigation. On June 21, 2015, in a Telegram group for task force members, the Car Wash prosecutor Orlando Martello Júnior asked one of his colleagues, Carlos Fernando dos Santos Lima: “what is the strategy for revealing the next steps in the cases of Electrobras, etc.?” Santos Lima replied that while he did not know what specifically his colleague was referring to, “my leaks are always designed to cause them to think that investigations are inevitable and thus incentivize them to collaborate.”

According to Brazilian law of criminal prosecutions (which provides rules governing confessions as part of plea bargains), a plea bargain can be accepted only if it has been offered “voluntarily.” But the prosecutor admitted to his colleagues that he used media leaks to forge an intimidating environment and, with that, could obtain confessions through manipulative means. These actions are squarely at odds with what are required to be the voluntary nature of confessions and plea bargains.

June 21, 2015 – Chat Group: FT MPF Curitiba 2

Orlando Martello – 09:03:04 – CF(leaks) what is the strategy for revealing the next steps of Electrobras, etc?

Carlos Fernando dos Santos Lima – 09:10:08 –http://m.politica.estadao.com.br/noticias/geral,na-mira-do-chefe-,1710379

Santos Lima – 09:12:21 – I don’t know what you’re talking about, but my leaks are always designed to cause them to think that investigations are inevitable and thus incentive them to collaborate.

Santos Lima – 09:15:37 – I read the news of Flores on the other list. It’s just reheated news.

Santos Lima – 09:18:16 – Incidentally, Moro told me that he will have to use this week’s Avancini term on Angra

Martello – 09:25:33 – CFleaks, we don’t know want to do BA on Angra e Eletrobrás? Why alert them to this fact in the press conference?

Martello – 09:26:00 – In order not to lose our habit?

The prosecutors were debating strategies to reach a plea bargain agreement with Bernardo Freiburghaus, whom they believed had served as one of the engineers of the bribery scheme used by the construction giant Odebrecht. Freiburghaus had escaped a police operation to arrest him because he had relocated to Switzerland in 2014 and was being pursued with an Interpol alert.

In the chat, Santos Lima boasted, without any embarrassment, that he “leaked” information to the press. In addition, his comment implied that this was a customary practice, since it referred to the plural: “my leaks.” And the prosecutor stated with apparent pride that he did so with well-defined objectives: to use fear of indictments in order to induce suspects to act in the prosecutors’ own interests by “collaborating.”

Notably, the prosecutor’s boast of these types of leaks did not elicit any objections from the other Car Wash prosecutors. Throughout the conversations, the rest of the group remained silent, suggesting that leaks of this type were far from unusual.

On the same day, the task force’s chief prosecutor, Dallagnol, along with Martello, announced in the chat that — in order to pressure the suspect — they had leaked information to a reporter with the right-wing newspaper Estadão that the U.S. government would help investigate Freiburghaus. They were expecting that this media leak would advance their investigation by pressuring Freiburghaus. It was Dallagnol who was personally responsible for the leak, as shown in his secret conversation with the newspaper reporter (The Intercept has translated the Portuguese conversations into English).

June 21, 2015 – Private chat

Deltan Dallagnol – 11:43:49 – The operator of Odebrecht was Bernardo, who is in Switzerland. The U.S. will act on our request, because the transactions passed through the U.S. We have already made a request for US cooperation regarding deposits received by PRC. This is something new. Are you interested in publishing this today or tomorrow, REDACTED, keeping my name off? You can say “source in the MPF.” At the press conference, Igor said there is a red notice to arrest him, and there is. He can be arrested anywhere in the world. Now with the US in action, which is new, let’s see if we can do what was done in the FIFA case to Bernardo, which is what inspired us.

REDACTED – 11:45:44 – Whoa awesome! !!!! I will publish today!!!!!!!

As the conversation progressed, the reporter advised that the story about U.S. aid in the Odebrecht case (which was not formalized at the time) would be the Estadão headline the next day.

Back in the prosecutor’s Telegram chat group, a conversation between June 21 and 22 detailed the task force’s intentions toward Freiburghaus:

June 21, 2015 – Chat Group: FT MPF Curitiba 2

Deltan Dallagnol – 20:33:52 – Tomorrow the cooperation with the US regarding Bernando is the headline in Estadão.

Dallagnol – 20:34:00 – Confirmed

Carlos Fernando dos Santos Lima – 20:55:16 – I tried to read, but I couldn’t. Tomorrow I’ll look. Let’s closely control the media. I have space at FSP [Folha], who knows how we can use them if we need.

The information leaked by the Car Wash prosecutorial task force was indeed the newspaper headline, and the methods of pressure imposed on the investigative source were resumed shortly thereafter in the same chat:

June 22, 2015 – Chat Group: FT MPF Curitiba 2

Deltan Dallagnol – 01:56:40 – I think we need to request a freeze of his assets in Switzerland

Dallagnol – 01:56:48 – Bank account, real estate and others

Dallagnol – 01:57:00 – Go and tell him he’ll lose everything

Dallagnol – 01:57:20 – Have him on his knees and then offer redemption. There’s no way he won’t take it

At the end of the day, the strategy failed, as Freiburghaus never provided any plea bargain or cooperation.

Beyond the use of media leaks to intimidate and manipulate confessions, what makes all of this particularly incriminating is that Dallagnol has publicly, and vehemently, denied that Car Wash prosecutors have ever used any leaks, claiming that all the leaks about Car Wash came instead from defense attorneys and their clients. In the interview with BBC Brasil following a speech he gave at Harvard Law School in April 2017, Dallagnol said that “public officials do not leak information — the loophole is inevitable access to secret data by defendants and their clients.” When asked directly if the task force had leaked, the chief prosecutor replied, “In cases where only public officials had access to the data, the information did not leak.”

Responding to inquiries from The Intercept about this story, the press spokesperson for the Car Wash task force denied that the prosecutors had ever leaked information to Estadão, insisting that it “never leaked sensitive information to the press, contrary to what the questioning suggests.” To justify this denial, the task force argues that information passed to the press must violate the law or a court order to be characterized as a “leak.” Using this newly created definition of “leak,” the task force argues that the material sent by Dallagnol to Estadão did not, in its view, violate either the law or any court order and therefore, cannot be accurately described as a “leak.”

“Is there any chance to release the news to GOL?”

But The Intercept’s reporting here does not claim or suggest that Dallagnol or Santos Lima committed a crime or violated court orders by leaking information that was not known to the public. The point of the reporting is that the prosecutors did exactly what Dallagnol told the BBC they never did: namely, leaked inside information about investigations of which the public and the media were unaware in order to advance their investigative goals.

To defend Dallagnol from this clear evidence that he lied, the task force is trying to invent a new definition of “leak,” a meaning that only considers an act to be a “leak” if it entails a violation of the law or a court order. But that, to put it generously, is not a commonly recognized understanding of what leaking means. Indeed, in his interview with the BBC, Dallagnol did not deny that the task force illegally leaked. He denied that the task force used leaks of any kind — “public officials do not leak information,” he said, adding: “In cases where only public agents had access to the data, the information did not leak.”

The task force’s insistence that it never used leaks is especially bizarre given that Santos Lima himself boasted that he did just that, using the word “leak” to describe his own actions: “my leaks are always designed to cause them to think that investigations are inevitable and thus incentive them to collaborate,” he wrote, demonstrating that even the prosecutors themselves do not understand leaks to have the definition they are now trying to impose on it. Moreover, in his conversation with the Estadão reporter, Dallagnol himself described the information he was sending about the proposed collaboration with the U.S. as “new” and for this reason, insisted that the information he sent could only be published if they keep “my name off” the record.” If the information published was already public, as the Car Wash task force is now claiming through its spokesperson, why would Dallagnol insist on anonymity?

Thus, the task force’s denial that prosecutors did exactly what Dallagnol falsely insisted they never did — leaking information that was not known to the public — is contradicted by the prosecutors’ own words, as posted in the chat above, in which they themselves describe their actions as “leaks.” It is also negated by Dallagnol’s insistence to the Estadão reporter that information passed to the paper should not be attributed to him. It is further refuted by other repeated episodes in which prosecutors admit to leaking information about investigations to the media, often using specifically the word “leaks” that they now seek to redefine.

Selective Leak

These leaks were not isolated cases. In 2016, Car Wash prosecutors spoke explicitly about their use of “selective leaking” to the media intended to influence and manipulate a rumored petition for habeas corpus from former Speaker of the House Eduardo Cunha, to be filed in the Supreme Court:

December 12, 2016 – Chat Group: Filhos do Januario 1

Carlos Fernando dos Santos Lima – 18:45:31 – I received from the Russian: off the record I received news, I don’t know if it’s true, that there would be an order from the Supreme Court that would release Cunha tomorrow

Roberson Pozzobon – 18:51:49 – This info is circulating here at the federal prosecutor’s office also

Paulo Roberto Galvão – 18:57:24 – The Supreme Court would be drained. I don’t believe it.

Athayde Ribeiro Costa – 18:57:40 –toffi, lewa and gm. I don’t doubt it.

Santos Lima – 18:58:37 – It’s necessary to see who goes to the hearing.

Jerusa Viecili – 18:58:39 – Pqp

Santos Lima –19:00:58 – Is there any chance to release the news to GOL?

Costa – 19:01:35 – selective leak … 

These dialogues prove that Dallagnol lied to the BBC when he denied the use of leaks. That denial came after Dallagnol participated in several conversations in which his task force colleagues explicitly discussed doing what he publicly denied: namely, promoting leaks and using the media for their own interests. Ironically, Dallagnol himself pointed out to the BBC how complex the task of proving leaks was because, according to him, those involved always deny it.

“It is very difficult to identify the point (source of the leak), because if you listen to these people, they will deny it,” he said. Indeed they do. That’s precisely what Dallagnol and his colleagues spent years doing falsely — until the truth was finally revealed through the publication of their own words.

João Felipe Linhares has contributed research to this article.

BEFORE KAMALA HARRIS SOURED ON BERNIE SANDERS’S MEDICARE FOR ALL BILL, SHE GREW HER EMAIL LIST FROM IT

Akela Lacy

August 26 2019, 12:23 p.m.

https://theintercept.com/2019/08/26/kamala-harris-medicare-for-all-sanders/

BEFORE DISTANCING HERSELF from Sen. Bernie Sanders’s Medicare for All campaign, Kamala Harris repeatedly boasted her support for the legislation in Facebook ads, in an effort to grow her list of supporters. Earlier this month, Harris backed away from Medicare for All during a private event in the Hamptons, telling a crowd of large-dollar donors that she had “not been comfortable with Bernie’s plan,” Bloomberg reported. 

“I was proud to be the first Senate Democrat to come out in support of Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All bill,” the ad, which ran from August 2 to August 7, 2018, and prompted Facebook users to share their email addresses with the campaign, read. “It is absurd that we are the only major industrialized nation in the world not to guarantee health care to all people. Add your name if you agree it’s time for Medicare for All.”

Harris told attendees at the fundraiser that her plan would preserve private insurance, distancing herself from Sanders’s plan, which she was the first senator to co-sponsor in 2017. 

In April 2019, her campaign ran a flurry of ads saying she was “proud to be an original co-sponsor of the Medicare for All bill in the Senate.”

In January, she ran a sponsored campaign via Daily Kos asking the site’s readers to sign a petition — one that would have them join her own email list — calling for Medicare for All. “Every single person living in our country should have access to high-quality, meaningful, affordable health care, from birth on up. That’s why I’m proud to co-sponsor the Medicare for All Act in the Senate,” she wrote in an email to the site’s users, linking to a petition that has since been removed and putting her support of Sanders’s bill in bold. “Not only is it smart for taxpayers — it’s morally the right thing to do. We have the power to make Medicare for All a reality in our country, but only if we come together and make our voices heard.”

In September 2017, in a similar petition, she named Sanders specifically while asking people to back her decision to co-sponsor his bill. She said that the U.S. “is stronger when everyone has access to affordable health care at every stage of their life, from birth on up. It’s for that reason I announced this week at our town hall that I intend to co-sponsor Senator Bernie Sanders’ Medicare–for–All legislation. I’m Senator Kamala Harris and I’m asking for your support…Sign here to join me as a citizen co-sponsor of Bernie Sanders’ Medicare–for–All legislation today.” It, too, is no longer up.

In August 2018, the campaign for the former prosecutor and junior senator from California ran at least six sponsored ads that reached Facebook users in states across the country. At least half of those were specifically targeted to California. The ads reached about 6,000 Facebook users, according to data available from Facebook. The ad called for Facebook users to add their names and email addresses to a petitionsupporting Medicare for All, expanding the campaign’s email list — a key fundraising tool.

In 2018, Harris’s Senate campaign ran ads with fundraising pitches linked to her support for Medicare for All. “Every donation you make keeps me off the phones and focused on fighting for things like Medicare for All, DACA, and bail reform in the U.S. Senate,” one ad read.

DESPITE HER STATEMENT at the donor event — which was hosted by movie executive Jamie Patricof and his wife Kelly — Harris remains a sponsor of Sanders’s bill, the Medicare for All Act of 2017. She has also spoken directly in support of single payer in recent years.

The recent comments, however, marked at least the second time that Harris walked back her support for universal health care since she launched her presidential campaign in January. During the first round of Democratic debates in June, Harris raised her hand when NBC moderators asked the candidates if they would eliminate private insurance. The next day, however, Harris told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that she didn’t think private insurance should be eliminated and that she had misunderstood the question. 

Ahead of the second round of presidential debates in July, Harris rolled out her own plan, “KamalaCare.” The plan seeks to achieve universal health care over the next 10 years by expanding Medicare with the help of private insurers, a strategy for which the Trump administration has also expressed support. Though Harris’s plan uses the term “Medicare for All” throughout, it preserves and promotes the role of private insurers, a stark contrast from Sanders’s bill, which provides for an entirely publicly funded system. 

After news of her comments at the Hamptons fundraiser were reported last week, Sanders and members of his team swiped back at Harris on Twitter. “Promises to big donors in the Hamptons don’t stay in the Hamptons,” Sanders speechwriter David Sirota wrote. Harris’s campaign spokesperson Ian Sams responded, “She has her own health care plan. So yeah, not a secret she isn’t running on Bernie’s plan anymore. Sorry, David.” 

Later in the day, Sanders posted a tweet taking a stab at his opponent. 

Bernie Sanders

✔@BernieSanders

I don't go to the Hamptons to raise money from billionaires. If I ever visited there, I would tell them the same thing I have said for the last 30 years: We must pass a Medicare for All system to guarantee affordable health care for all, not just for those who can afford it.

31.1K

3:25 PM - Aug 19, 2019

Twitter Ads info and privacy

7,693 people are talking about this

The Harris campaign did not respond to requests for comment. Earlier this month, Sams told the Daily Beast, “There’s a difference between signing onto a good idea and running on a plan,” in reference to the contrast between Harris’s 2017 support for single payer and the comments she made to donors.

A TOP FINANCIER OF TRUMP AND MCCONNELL IS A DRIVING FORCE BEHIND AMAZON DEFORESTATION

Ryan Grim

August 27 2019, 10:53 a.m.

https://theintercept.com/2019/08/27/amazon-rainforest-fire-blackstone/

TWO BRAZILIAN FIRMS owned by a top donor to President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are significantly responsible for the ongoing destruction of the Amazon rainforest, carnage that has developed into raging fires that have captivated global attention. 

The companies have wrested control of land, deforested it, and helped build a controversial highway to their new terminal in the one-time jungle, all to facilitate the cultivation and export of grain and soybeans. The shipping terminal at Miritituba, deep in the Amazon in the Brazilian state of Pará, allows growers to load soybeans on barges, which will then sail to a larger port before the cargo is shipped around the world. 

The Amazon terminal is run by Hidrovias do Brasil, a company that is owned in large part by Blackstone, a major U.S. investment firm. Another Blackstone company, Pátria Investimentos, owns more than 50 percent of Hidrovias, while Blackstone itself directly owns an additional roughly 10 percent stake. Blackstone co-founder and CEO Stephen Schwarzman is a close ally of Trump and has donated millions of dollars to McConnell in recent years. 

“Blackstone is committed to responsible environmental stewardship,” the company said in a statement. “This focus and dedication is embedded in every investment decision we make and guides how we conduct ourselves as operators. In this instance, while we do not have operating control, we know the company has made a significant reduction in overall carbon emissions through lower congestion and allowed the more efficient flow of agricultural goods by Brazilian farmers.”

The port and the highway have been deeply controversial in Brazil, and were subjects of a 2016 investigation by The Intercept Brasil. Hidrovias announced in early 2016 that it would soon begin exporting soybeans trucked from the state of Mato Grosso along the B.R.-163 highway. The road was largely unpaved at the time, but the company said it planned to continue improving and developing it. In the spring of 2019, the government of Jair Bolsonaro, elected in fall 2018, announced that Hidrovias would partner in the privatization and development of hundreds of miles of the B.R.-163. Developing the roadway itself causes deforestation, but, more importantly, it helps make possible the broader transformation of the Amazon from jungle to farmland.

The roadway, B.R. 163, has had a marked effect on deforestation. After the devastation that began under the military dictatorship and accelerated through the 1970s and ’80s, the rate of deforestation slowed, as a coalition of Indigenous communities and other advocates of sustaining the forest fought back against the encroachment. The progress began turning back in 2014, as political tides shifted right and global commodity prices climbed. Deforestation began to truly spike again after the soft coup that ousted President Dilma Rousseff of the Workers’ Party in 2016. The right-wing government that seized power named soy mogul Blairo Maggi, a former governor of Mato Grosso, as minister of agriculture.

Yet even as deforestation had been slowing prior to the coup, the area around the highway was being destroyed. “Every year between 2004 and 2013 — except 2005 — while deforestation in Amazonia as a whole fell, it increased in the region around the B.R.-163,” the Financial Times reported in September 2017. That sparked pushback from Indigenous defenders of the Amazon. In March, Hidrovias admitted that its business had been slowed by increasing blockades on B.R. 163, as people put their bodies in front of the destruction. Still, the company is pushing forward. Hidrovios recently said that, thanks to heavy investment, it planned to double its grain shipping capacity to 13 million tons.

The Amazon, where a record number of fires have been raging, is the world’s largest rainforest. It absorbs a significant amount of carbon dioxide, a major contributor to the climate crisis. The Amazon is so dense in vegetation that it produces something like a fifth of the world’s oxygen supply. The moisture that evaporates from the Amazon is important form farmlands not just in South America, but also in the U.S. Midwest, where it falls to the earth as rain. Protection of the Amazon, 60 percent of which is in Brazil, is crucial to the continued existence of civilization as we know it. 

The effort to transform the Amazon from a rainforest into a source of agribusiness revenue is central to the conflict, and linked to the fires raging out of control today. The leading edge of the invasion of the jungle is being cut by grileiros, or “land-grabbers,” who operate outside the law with chainsaws. The grileiros then sell the newly cleared land to agribusiness concerns, whose harvest is driven on the highway to the terminal, before being exported. Bolsonaro has long called for the Amazon to be turned over to agribusiness, and has rapidly defanged agencies responsible for protecting it, and empowered agribusiness leaders intent on clearing the forest. The land-grabbers have become emboldened.

“With Bolsonaro, the invasions are worse and will continue to get worse,” Francisco Umanari, a 42-year-old Apurinã chief, told Alexander Zaitchik,for a recent story in The Intercept. “His project for the Amazon is agribusiness. Unless he is stopped, he’ll run over our rights and allow a giant invasion of the forest. The land grabs are not new, but it’s become a question of life and death.”

Fires in the Amazon have been producing devastation described as unprecedented, many of them lit by farmers and others looking to clear land for cultivation or grazing. Bolsonaro initially dismissed the fires as unworthy of serious attention. Several weeks ago, Bolsonaro fired a chief government scientist for a report on the rapid escalation of deforestation under Bolsonaro’s administration, claiming that the numbers were fabricated. 

Beginning with the military dictatorship in Brazil, when agribusiness was fully empowered, roughly a fifth of the jungle was destroyed by the mid-2000s. If the Amazon loses another fifth of its mass, it is at risk of a phenomenon known as dieback, where the forest becomes so dry that avicious, cascading cycle takes over, and it becomes, as Zaitchik writes,“beyond the reach of any subsequent human intervention or regret.”

SCHWARZMAN, A FOUNDER of Blackstone, owns roughly a fifth of the company, making him one of the world’s richest men. In 2018, he was paid at least $568 million, which was, in fact, a drop from the $786 million he made the year before. He has been generous toward McConnell and Trump with that wealth. In 2016, he gave $2.5 million to the Senate Leadership Fund, McConnell’s Super PAC and put Jim Breyer, McConnell’s billionaire brother-in-law, on the board of Blackstone. Two years later, Schwarzman kicked in $8 million to McConnell’s Super PAC. 

Blackstone employees have given well over $10 million to McConnell and his Super PAC over the years, making them the biggest source of direct financing over McConnell’s career. McConnell’s Senate campaign declined to comment.

Schwarzman is a close friend and adviser to Trump, and served as the chair of his Strategic and Policy Forum until it fell apart in the wake of the Charlottesville neo-Nazi rally, in which Trump famously praised “very fine people, on both sides.” In December 2017, as the final details of the GOP tax cut were being ironed out, Schwarzman hosted a $100,000-a-plate fundraiser for Trump. Some of the president’s dinner companions complained about the tax bill, and days later, Trump slashed the top percentage rate in the final package from 39.6 to 37. 

In recent months, the Sackler family, whose members founded and own the pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma, have become pariahs for their role in facilitating the opioid crisis and the deaths of tens of thousands of people. Schwarzman’s contributions to the destruction of the Amazon, which stands between humanity and an uninhabitable planet, may ultimately render him as socially untouchable as the Sacklers, given the scale of the fallout from the destruction of the rainforest. 

IN DEFENSE OF the project, a Blackstone spokesperson noted that it had been approved by the International Finance Corporation, an affiliate of the World Bank, and that the IFC had determined that the project would, in fact, reduce carbon emissions. Blackstone also forwarded a statement that it credited to Hidrovias, which also emphasized the support of the IFC:

Hidrovias has always worked within the highest Environmental, Social and Governance (“ESG”)  standards, constantly evaluated by audits from international multilateral agencies, such as the World Bank – IFC (International Finance Corporation). In addition, Hidrovias maintains all the environmental  licenses required by the competent authorities.

The IFC has financed some of the world’s most environmentally destructive projects, so its endorsement in itself is not particularly persuasive. But even on its own terms, the IFC’s study of the Blackstone project calls the project’s sustainability into question. Transporting soy or grain by waterway is indeed a less carbon-intensive method of transport, the IFC correctly noted in its report. But, it went on, that assessment doesn’t take into account the reality that “the construction of the Miritituba port, close to still-intact areas of the Amazon forest, is likely to lower transport costs for farmers and thereby accelerate conversion of natural habitats into agricultural areas, particularly for soy production.”

The project is OK, the bank argued, because Hidrovias and its clients can be trusted to be responsible, and that “the Miritituba port is being purpose-built to handle soy traded only by responsible traders who are sensitive to the preservation of natural habitats.” The bank assured that “100% of the company’s transport capacity in the North System is contracted to large trading companies, which observe high levels of governance and abide by the Amazon Soy Moratorium. The Moratorium, which prohibits purchasing soy produced on illegally deforested lands, was originally negotiated in 2006 between the big traders, Greenpeace, and Brazilian authorities. It has been renewed on a yearly basis since then.”

The moratorium, however, is only as strong as the government’s ability to monitor it. Proving that soy was grown on illegally deforested lands is highly difficult, as land-grabbers move quickly to clear forest and sell the newly cleared land to ranchers or agribusiness operators who quickly put it into cultivation and later claim that they had no way of knowing it was illegally deforested. The scheme also presumes that the government is interested in regulating agribusiness; the Bolsonaro administration has been quite explicit that it is not interested in doing so, putting top agribusiness officials in key posts, while defunding regulatory agencies.

And even if it were somehow true that all of the soy shipped from the Hidrovias port met all the requirements of the moratorium, commodity markets are fluid. A new port for the big traders eases congestion and lowers transportation costs elsewhere for smaller traders, thereby encouraging more development and more cultivation. (The IFC noted that Hidrovias promised to watch its soy clients closely: “HDB will establish and maintain internal procedures to review clients’ compliance with all provisions of Amazon Soy Moratorium or any other relevant legal requirements aimed at preventing trade in soy produced in illegally deforested areas. If the purpose of the port or the mix of HDB’s clients changes, the company will advise IFC of such changes and may be required to undertake further due diligence to ensure that these do not lead to undesirable indirect impacts.”)

The final justification the IFC made for the project comes down to incrementalism. Other development is also happening, the bank noted, so this single port can only cause so much harm. It concluded that “the port’s incremental contribution to the overall reduction of transport costs is judged to be marginal, given the myriad other factors (paving of B.R.-163, installation of other ports in Miritituba district, etc.) that are contributing to development in the region.” Bolsonaro has plans to pave significantly more roads in the Amazon that have otherwise been impassable much of the year, a project made feasible by international financing.

Of course, Hidrovias is also involved in paving B.R.-163 and other development projects in the region. Those projects, such as the paving of the highway, have additional indirect — though entirely predictable — consequences, as they spur side roads that make previously difficult-to-reach areas of the Amazon accessible for mining, logging, or further deforestation.

A Blackstone spokesperson noted that the fund only owns 9.3 percent of Hidrovias. But that ignores the 55.8 percent of Hidrovias that is owned by Pátria Investimentos. On Hidrovias’s website, Pátria is described as a company “in partnership with Blackstone,” and it is known in the financial industry to be a Blackstone company. A November 2018 article in Private Equity News about Bolsonaro’s election was headlined: “Blackstone’s Pátria: Brazilian Democracy is Not in Danger.”

It quoted the company’s chief economist assuring the public that “descent into authoritarianism is exceedingly unlikely.” That prediction has not borne out terribly well, but Blackstone appears to remain a strong supporter of Bolsonaro. The Brazilian president traveled to New York in May to be honored at a gala, which was sponsored by Refinitiv — a company majority-owned by Blackstone.

SENATE DEMOCRATS VS PROGRESSIVES

SENATE DEMOCRATS’ CAMPAIGN ARM IS PRESSURING CONSULTANTS NOT TO WORK WITH LEADING PROGRESSIVE CANDIDATE IN COLORADO

Aída Chávez, Akela Lacy

August 29 2019, 11:27 a.m.

https://theintercept.com/2019/08/29/dscc-colorado-senate-democrats/

BEFORE THE Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee endorsed former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper in a 2020 Senate race, it pressured consultants from at least five firms not to work with a leading progressive in the race, the candidate told The Intercept.

Andrew Romanoff, who is one of more than a dozen candidates vying for Republican Sen. Cory Gardner’s seat, told The Intercept that multiple consultants turned down jobs with his campaign citing pressure from the DSCC.

“They’ve made it clear to a number of the firms and individuals we tried to hire that they wouldn’t get any business in Washington or with the DSCC if they worked with me,” Romanoff said. “It’s been a well-orchestrated operation to blackball ragtag grassroots teams.”

At least five firms and 25 prospective staff turned down working with his campaign, said Romanoff, who has raised more than $1 million in individual contributions so far. “I spoke to the firms, my campaign manager spoke to the staff prospects,” he said. “Pretty much everyone who checked in with the DSCC got the same warning: Helping us would cost them.”

A consultant who spoke to The Intercept on the condition of anonymity said that their firm had been far along in talks to work for Romanoff when they got word that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and the DSCC weren’t happy. The firm was told by a top DSCC staffer that they “absolutely under no circumstances could work for Andrew Romanoff, so we withdrew our offer to be his consulting firm.”

The DSCC is using an “unquestionably far more heavy-handed approach this year than they have in previous cycles,” the consultant said.

Earlier this year, the DSCC’s companion organization in the House, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, made it official policy to cut off funding and vendors to Democrats who challenged incumbent Democrats. Putting the policy in writing ratcheted up what had been more of an informal understanding in prior cycles. But if the DSCC’s intervention in Colorado is any indication, the Democrats’ Senate campaign arm is taking the blacklist one step further, by discouraging consultants from working not only for challengers to incumbent Democrats, but also for progressives running against the establishment’s preferred candidate in a seat currently held by the GOP. In Romanoff’s case, the DSCC did so before it had been clear whether Washington’s choice, Hickenlooper, even planned to run.

It’s still early in the cycle, and while some candidates are getting their Senate campaigns off the ground, others are still deciding whether to jump in. Individuals connected to a handful of campaigns across the country said they’ve heard about interventions by national Democrats, either in the form of the DSCC pressuring consultants not to work with progressive candidates, or Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer telling people not to run for office in the first place.

“First they came for the House candidates; now they’re gonna come for the Senate candidates,” said Heather Brewer, who is managing the Senate campaign of New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver, a progressive who was snubbed by the DSCC, which made an early endorsement of Ben Ray Luján, a member of House Democratic leadership. “It’s not rocket science to see where this is heading.”

“They’re threatening people’s livelihoods, if people dare break with what the insiders in Washington want,” Brewer added. “It’s extortion.”

Schumer’s office directed questions to the DSCC, which is officially run by Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, but known to be controlled by Schumer, whose piloting of the committee in 2006 and 2008 reclaimed the Senate for Democrats and then gave them a brief filibuster-proof majority. “We do not have a policy of preventing firms from working with candidates,” a DSCC spokesperson told The Intercept in an email. “In our role as a campaign committee focused on winning Senate seats, we have ongoing conversations with strategists and advisers about battleground races.”

ON AUGUST 23, months before the Democratic primary, the DSCC endorsed Hickenlooper, who dropped out of the presidential race on August 15 and announced a Senate bid a week later. Notably, Hickenlooper is one of the more conservative candidates in the race. The former governor championed fracking during his tenure and as a presidential candidate came out against Medicare for All and the Green New Deal. Romanoff, meanwhile, is backing both of those policies and has sworn off corporate political action committee money. The DSCC backed Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, another Democratic presidential candidate, over Romanoff in the state’s 2010 Democratic primary.

The DSCC’s early endorsement in a race with no Democratic incumbent didn’t go over well with Colorado party officials, who, in internal emails published by the Denver Post on Tuesday, described the DSCC’s immediate decision to back Hickenlooper over 11 other candidates as a “slap in the face.”

Six of the seven women candidates running in the Colorado primary sent a letter to DSCC leadership on Monday, Women’s Equality Day, urging it to reconsider its endorsement of Hickenlooper. “All of us, like many women in Colorado and across the country, have seen well-qualified women passed over for male candidates in the workplace time and again,” they wrote.

In a Hill TV interview with Krystal Ball, presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders echoed progressives’ frustration. “I think you let it play out,” he said of the DSCC’s endorsement of Hickenlooper. “This is obviously a major debate within the Democratic Party. Those who think that so-called centrist candidates backed by folks who have a lot of money may be able to win over some moderate Republicans — that is the future. I disagree. The future of the Democratic Party is to greatly expand the base, increase voter turnout, especially with young people, speak to the needs of working people. I believe there are some people who voted for Trump who, in fact, if given the option of a progressive agenda, will vote with us.”

CANDIDATES’ EXPERIENCES WITH the DSCC have been mixed. One consultant who spoke to The Intercept on the condition of anonymity said they’d recently worked with a contractor who had consulted with the committee about working with a particular candidate. The DSCC told the contractor that it didn’t care who they were working for, because it had already settled on a different candidate, whom Schumer was encouraging to enter the race.

Still, there have been other instances of Senate Democratic leadership trying to tip the scales. In Iowa, where the DSCC is backing Theresa Greenfield, Time Magazine reported earlier in June that Schumer had advised J.D. Scholten, who challenged Rep. Steve King in a House race last year, not to run for Senate.

“We don’t need a primary,” Schumer told Scholten in a phone call, Time reported. Scholten, who lost to King by less than 3 percentage points, confirmed Schumer’s comments to The Intercept, but clarified that it wasn’t “forceful at all” because Scholten was already more inclined to run for King’s seat in Congress. “It was when Schumer called me to mention that they were gonna be backing Theresa [Greenfield]. I said, well, that doesn’t necessarily deter me, and then he made the comment,” Scholten said.

North Carolina state Sen. Erica Smith, who’s leading the latest polls in her bid against Republican Sen. Thom Tillis, said she has reason to believe that the DSCC is doing similar things in her race. The committee told her that it isn’t yet endorsing in that race, and that it’s not helping any candidates fundraise — but there are whispers that the DSCC might support her potential primary opponent Cal Cunningham, whom it has backed in the past.

“It seems clear to me that there is a question of integrity or lack thereof,” Smith said. “This brings to question who’s telling the truth. And there’s an appearance to me that Senator Schumer is trying to purchase — trying to buy a U.S. Senate seat in North Carolina. That is not going to go well for the constituents that I serve. And I am very much opposed to that. New York and North Carolina are extremely different.”

Smith’s campaign manager Jonathan Lucas said he had been directly pressured by people he described as veteran, well-connected establishment Democratic operatives in North Carolina not to work with Smith, and that he’s faced similar pressure in years past while working on other races in the state. Given the makeup of Cunningham’s donor base, Lucas believes that pressure originated from the DSCC and Schumer, because a significant portion of Cunningham’s donors have links to the Senate minority leader.

“I had a number of influential ‘establishment’ Democrats tell me it was a mistake to work for her, she will never be the nominee, etc.,” Lucas said in a statement, referring to Smith. “Well, I have never been an establishment consultant. I met her and I am not only convinced she will win, but that she is exactly the type of candidate that we need right now. One that Schumer and the establishment fear because her vote is not for sale.”

HOW OHIO’S CHAMBER OF COMMERCE KILLED AN ANTI-POLLUTION BILL OF RIGHTS

H. Claire Brown

August 29 2019, 7:00 a.m.

https://theintercept.com/2019/08/29/lake-erie-bill-of-rights-ohio/

EARLIER THIS SUMMER, environmental activists in Ohio were alarmed by the passage of a mysterious state budget amendment that would close a new avenue for residents to sue polluters. The provision invalidated a landmark anti-pollution initiative passed by Toledo voters just a few months before. Now, emails obtained in a public records request reveal that the Ohio Chamber of Commerce secured the cooperation of a key Republican lawmaker in a successful effort to slip the amendment into an appropriations bill at the eleventh hour.

The emails depict the chamber’s environmental policy director requesting a last-minute meeting with state Rep. Jim Hoops to discuss the Lake Erie Bill of Rights, the newly minted ballot initiative allowing citizens to sue polluters on behalf of Lake Erie. A legislative aide responded quickly, scheduling a same-day meeting. Despite the chamber director’s admission that his proposal would need to be submitted after the legislature’s deadline, the aide produced draft amendment language to share with him three weeks later. The chamber’s subsequent revisions made their way into the final bill, effectively nullifying the Lake Erie Bill of Rights.

“This shows the influence of the Chamber of Commerce writing our laws and undermining the democracy of the people of Toledo,” said Bill Lyons, a board member of the Ohio Community Rights Network, an environmental advocacy organization. After the May vote, Lyons filed a series of public records requests to try to figure out which lawmaker introduced the amendment. The emails were provided to The Intercept and The New Food Economy by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, an affiliate of the Ohio Community Rights Network.

IN FEBRUARY, MORE than 60 percent of participants in a special election in Toledo voted to establish a Bill of Rights for Lake Erie. It was a unique ballot question that would grant Lake Erie the right to “exist, flourish, and naturally evolve.” The intent was to give Lake Erie and its human allies legal standing to file lawsuits against polluters.

Organizers in Ohio launched their efforts to pass the initiative after a toxic algal bloom — caused by fertilizer and manure runoff from upstream farms — rendered Toledo’s water undrinkable and largely unusable (some residents were advised not to shower) for a few days in 2014. Tish O’Dell, a state organizer for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, said residents spent two years trying to persuade the state government to take action to prevent future issues.

In Ohio, however, the farm runoff largely responsible for polluting Lake Erie is minimally regulated. Farmers in the state also benefit from key legal protections that limit their vulnerability to pollution-related lawsuits. Ohio has a so-called right-to-farm law, which dramatically limits neighbors’ ability to win lawsuits alleging that farm pollution unfairly impacts their quality of life. (Hoops appears to have introduced another amendment that expands the definition of farmland protected under the state’s right-to-farm law; that amendment passed this summer as well, further narrowing the legal pathways advocates might use to limit agricultural runoff.) And at the federal level, the Clean Water Act has long exempted most agricultural operations from robust regulation.

For all these reasons, advocates came to believe that existing legal frameworks would never sufficiently protect the lake and those who live near it. By 2016, they were ready to try something new. After O’Dell and her colleague Thomas Linzey gave a presentation on so-called rights-of-nature laws at Bowling Green University, Toledo activists approached them about devising a plan for Lake Erie. The group headed to a nearby pub.

“That’s actually how the Lake Erie Bill of Rights hatched,” O’Dell said. “It was on a cocktail napkin at the bar.”

After its passage, the Lake Erie Bill of Rights was immediately challenged in federal court. The next day, the Drewes Farm Partnership had filed a 24-page lawsuit arguing that protections for the lake could mean financial ruin for the farm’s business. That lawsuit is ongoing. Then, in May, the eleventh-hour amendment invalidating the lake’s rights found its way into the House version of the state’s budget.

It all started with an email from the Ohio Chamber of Commerce. The chamber’s director of energy and environmental policy, Zack Frymier, wrote to request a meeting with Hoops, the state House representative, on April 11, a few weeks before the vote. (Hoops is chair of the Ohio House Finance Subcommittee on Agriculture, Development, and Natural Resources.)

“I’m hoping to find some time (like everyone else) to run something by Chairman Hoops regarding the Lake Erie Bill of Rights that passed in Toledo in February,” Frymier wrote. “We have some language that we’d request to be considered for the budget. Though obviously it would have to be submitted after tomorrow’s deadline we’d still like to have a conversation.”

A legislative aide replied promptly, arranging a meeting with Hoops for 4:00 p.m. that day. Despite the short notice — it was already nearly 3:00 p.m. — Frymier quickly and enthusiastically responded that he’d be there.

A few weeks later, the aide got back to Frymier with draft text of the amendment, asking if the wording made sense to him. Frymier then asked for the addition of text that would more directly refute the Lake Erie Bill of Rights.

“Language in this amendment stating that [nature and ecosystems] do not have standing is essential to what we’re trying to accomplish,” Frymier wrote on May 2.

The amendment’s final text includes the additional statement Frymier asked for: “Nature or any ecosystem does not have standing to participate in or bring an action in any court of common pleas.”

The amendment was reported by local media on May 8. The next day, the state House passed its version of the bill. Lyons, the Community Rights Network board member, later testified in front of the state Senate, asking legislators to strike the amendment from the final budget. His efforts were unsuccessful and, after a few weeks of negotiation, Republican Gov. Mike DeWine signed the measure into law.

Lyons said he was surprised by the degree of collaboration between the Chamber of Commerce and Hoops’s subcommittee. “The fact that they would run that language specifically by them — I mean, who else gets that opportunity?” he said. (Neither the Ohio Chamber of Commerce nor Hoops’s office responded to requests for comment.)

Business advocates — primarily the fossil fuel giant BP, which has fracking interests in the state — spent more than $300,000 to campaign against the Lake Erie Bill of Rights prior to its passage in Toledo. The coalition advocating in its favor, Toledoans for Safe Water, spent less than $6,000, according to Great Lakes Now.

Municipalities around the nation have been slowly adopting rights-of-nature ordinances for more than a decade. Pittsburgh banned fracking using this legal framework in 2010. More recently, a county in Oregon voted to ban aerial pesticide spraying the same way.

Rights-of-nature laws likely face a long road ahead. If the Lake Erie Bill of Rights is any indication, many may be tied up in lawsuits for years to come.

For O’Dell, the Ohio organizer, the Lake Erie Bill of Rights is already a win regardless of its fate. “The people kept fighting to get it on the ballot. They defeated big corporate money. They won, and they’re still fighting,” she said. “So I don’t care what happens — they have ignited interest all around the world.”

Update: August 29, 2019, 4:55 p.m. ET
This piece has been updated to clarify the level of spending in favor of the Lake Erie Bill of Rights and to include Thomas Linzey as a co-presenter of O’Dell’s presentation promoting rights of nature.