After Brazil’s Federal Police arrested federal deputy Chiquinho Brazão (former Union Brazil Party affiliate); his brother, Domingos Brazão, advisor to the Rio de Janeiro State Court of Auditors (TCE-RJ, in Portuguese); and Rivaldo Barbosa, former head of the Rio de Janeiro Civil Police, Supreme Court Minister Alexandre de Moraes made public the investigation into the murder of Rio de Janeiro city councilor Marielle Franco (Socialism and Freedom Party, also known as PSOL).
According to the document, the Brazão brothers decided to have Marielle Franco murdered because she was opposing the vote on the Supplementary Bill 174/2016, proposed by Chiquinho Brazão, who was also a city councilor at the time. The bill, dubbed “PL da Grilagem” (“Land Grabbing Bill”, in English) advocated for the regularization of areas of land in neighborhoods where Rio de Janeiro's militias operate.
Marielle Franco and her party opposed the bill, which ironically ended up being approved on the day of Marielle’s death, March 14, 2018, with 27 votes in favor, a very tight vote, since the minimum is 26 votes. The political strain of approving the matter alegedly angered Chiquinho Brazão.
According to the investigation, the militia infiltrated a man called Laerte Silva de Lima into PSOL to get information about Marielle Franco's routine. Laerte allegedly said Marielle worked in militia areas so that the project would not gain popular support.
"As stated, Ronnie Lessa [the gunman hired to kill Marielle] heard from Domingos Brazão that Laerte allegedly said that Marielle asked the population not to join new allotments located in militia rulled areas," reads the text from the Federal Police.
Marielle Franco's intention was for the areas to be handed over by the government for low-income housing. However, the militiamen hoped to profit from buildings in illegal properties aimed at the region's middle and upper classes.
At a press conference on Sunday (24), the Minister of Justice and Public Security, Ricardo Lewandoviski, talked about the dispute between Marielle Franco and Chiquinho Brazão, which was identified as the trigger for the city councilor’s murder.
"She was opposing precisely this group that, in the Rio de Janeiro City Council, wanted to regularize land and use it for commercial purposes. Marielle wanted to use these areas for social purposes, for popular housing," the minister explained.
Presented on December 8, 2016, by Chiquinho Brazão, Bill 174 "allows the regularization of land parcels that contain existing single-family and two-family buildings and the subsequent and immediate legalization of the construction itself, located in the districts of Vargem Grande, Vargem Pequena and Itanhangá, in the XXIV R.A., under the conditions it mentions, and makes other provisions."
In its first vote, on May 25, 2017, the bill was approved in the first round, with Marielle Franco and the entire PSOL caucus voting against it. A few days later, the bill received a substitute that annoyed Chiquinho Brazão, as it covered other areas of the municipality.
The other side
Domingos Brazão's press office issued a statement to the Brazilian newspaper Folha de S. Paulo stating that he was "surprised" by the Supreme Court’s decision. The TCE councilor states that he has "no involvement with the characters mentioned, stressing that allegations should not be treated as absolute truth, especially when they are the words of criminals who made murder into a profession".
To the news site UOL, Rivaldo Barbosa's defense justified the lack of a statement because they still don't have access to the case file or the decision that decreed his arrest.
So far, there has been no statement from federal deputy Chiquinho Brazão.
Edited by: Vivian Virissimo
