Brazil's Supreme Court Justice Flávio Dino on Sunday (Sept. 13) lifted the secrecy on material gathered by the São Paulo Civil Police about the suspected use of public money to finance Dark Horse, a biopic of former president Jair Bolsonaro. In the same ruling, issued under Petition 16,669/DF, Dino ordered that the state-level inquiry now run publicly at the Supreme Court and told the São Paulo public security department to hand over to the Federal Police the phones, computers, documents and raw data extracted from devices seized last Thursday (Sept. 10). According to BBC News Brasil, Dino justified ending the secrecy as a matter of transparency and as a way to prevent selective leaks.
Among the newly public files is the report of the state investigation, code-named Operation Wi-Fi. According to the news site G1, the inquiry covers federal money from congressional earmarks known as emendas parlamentares and municipal funds from agreements with the São Paulo city government, and the report says there are "consistent suspicions" that money from WiFi Livre SP, the city's free internet program, paid for work on the film, which was shot in English with a Hollywood cast and director:
"There are consistent suspicions of commingling of assets and that public resources from the 'WiFi Livre SP' program were diverted to cover the production activities of this film, using accounts of subcontracted companies and of other social organizations run by the person under investigation to launder values taken from São Paulo's public coffers."
The "person under investigation" named in the report is Karina Ferreira da Gama, owner of the production company Go Up Entertainment and president of the Instituto Conhecer Brasil (ICB). Reviewing the material, Dino wrote that the evidence points to a possible "sophisticated scheme of allocation and diversion of public funds", centered on federal earmarks. He also cited, without detailing the faction's alleged role or naming members, an investigative line pointing to "ties with the PCC (Primeiro Comando da Capital)", one of Brazil's largest criminal organizations. On Congressman Mario Frias (PL-SP), the film's screenwriter and executive producer, Dino wrote: "There is repeated reference, in the criminal itinerary, to a federal deputy, Mr. Mario Frias, who in the hypothetical terrain of the investigation would occupy a leadership role in the supposed criminal architecture." Frias and Gama are under investigation and deny any wrongdoing.
A closed financial circuit
The ruling transcribes Federal Police findings that Complexsys Soluções Integradas, a company hired by the ICB to carry out publicly funded projects, received direct transfers from Frias himself and sent money back to the institute and to the Academia Nacional de Cultura (ANC), an organization run by the same administrator as the ICB. To investigators, the flow of funds among the lawmaker, the grant recipient, the contractor and another beneficiary shows "a closed financial circuit". The inquiry also points to commingled assets: the ICB, Go Up and a consultancy called G07 shared the same address on Avenida Paulista, and experts found invoices issued in numerical sequence on the same date and tax receipts worth 2 million reais canceled right after issuance. BBC News Brasil reports that investigators also point to a 2 million real transfer from Frias to Gama. The police estimate the film cost between 8 million and 20 million reais.
Timeline
The Civil Police has sought, since May, access to financial intelligence reports from Coaf, Brazil's financial intelligence unit, on Gama and the ICB, filing at least four requests. On Aug. 28, state judge Nelson Augusto Bernardes denied the request; on Sept. 3 the police sent additional information. On Thursday (Sept. 10), search warrants were served on Frias and Gama, with no arrests. On Sunday, as he lifted the secrecy, Dino also authorized access to the Coaf data, G1 reported. Separately, the Supreme Court is investigating the origin of money sent by former banker Daniel Vorcaro, of Banco Master, to finance the film after requests by Senator Flávio Bolsonaro (PL), according to BBC News Brasil.
Gama's defense said it received the ruling "with absolute respect" and viewed it as "positive". "Whoever has already voluntarily presented more than 20,000 pages of documents does not fear transparency," lawyer Ricardo Sayeg said in a statement, adding that "an investigation is not an accusation, much less a conviction". Frias, in a video posted on Thursday, called the police operation a "smoke screen" during an election season and said the earmark under investigation funded a sports and digital literacy project for children, backed by documents and receipts that prove it was lawful. In May, he had called the claim that he steered earmarks to the film "absolutely false, devoid of any evidentiary basis and defamatory".
The next step is the transfer of the seized raw material to the Federal Police and the start of public proceedings of the unified inquiry at the Supreme Court under Dino. The outlets consulted did not report a deadline for the handover.