This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 BRASILIA 002004 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV KJUS PHUM BR
SUBJECT: ONE LESS ROGUE IN THE GALLERY: POLITICIAN CHARGED 
WITH MURDER IS EXPELLED FROM BRASILIA'S LEGISLATURE 
 
¶1. (SBU) SUMMARY.  Carlos Xavier on August 10 became the 
first legislator ever expelled from the District Assembly 
(equivalent to a state senate) of the Federal District of 
Brasilia.  No mean feat, given the Assembly's notoriety as a 
haven for scoundrels.  Xavier, who emerged from humble 
origins, is the subject of an ongoing investigation into a 
web of land frauds.  But the crime that led to his expulsion 
was his alleged involvement in the murder of a 16-year old 
boy who had been having an affair with Xavier's wife.  While 
the evidence against Xavier was overwhelming and his defense 
implausible, his Assembly colleagues expelled him by the 
bare-minimum vote margin.  Some of the other Deputies were 
probably concerned about setting a precedent by expelling an 
accused criminal, as the 24-member Assembly --never known for 
its high-quality work-- still houses a half dozen Deputies 
suspected of various crimes.  Thus, the entire affair leaves 
in doubt whether this is a blow against impunity, a small 
step in the right direction, or merely serves to draw a line: 
 that murderers, at least, will not be tolerated in the 
District Assembly.  END SUMMARY. 
 
BOOTBLACK AND BOOTSTRAPS 
------------------------ 
¶2. (SBU) One of eleven children of an itinerant bricklayer, 
Carlos Xavier put himself through school shining shoes and 
selling candy on street corners.  Finding work as a 
bureaucrat in the Brasilia government, he got involved in 
local politics and in 1994 was elected to the first of three 
terms in the District Assembly.  A member of the PMDB party 
and allied to PMDB Governor Joaquim Roriz, Xavier beat 
charges in 1998 that he bribed two teenaged girls not to 
testify against his brother in a rape case.  Since 2001, he 
has been under investigation on charges that he and his 
cronies benefited from his actions to fraudulently rezone 
empty public lots as business sites.  Some of the properties' 
values increased fifty times. 
 
¶3. (SBU) In 2002, Carlos Xavier ran for his third term in the 
Brasilia District Assembly.  During the race, campaign 
volunteer Ewerton da Rocha began a sexual affair with 
Xavier's wife.  In March 2004, Ewerton, 16, was found shot to 
death in a field --allegedly killed by two youths sent by 
Xavier.  Xavier had visited Ewerton's house just before the 
killing and threatened his parents.  The police and the 
District Assembly's Ethics Committee began looking into his 
involvement in the murder, and on June 22, a Brasilia court 
indicted him for aggravated homicide.  A week later, the 
Ethics Committee passed a motion for Xavier's expulsion. 
 
CARLOS XAVIER NARROWLY EXPELLED FROM ASSEMBLY 
--------------------------------------------- 
¶4. (SBU) Given a chance to present a defense, Xavier's weepy 
ramblings convinced nobody, and on August 5, the full 
24-member Assembly cast the bare minimum 13 votes to expel 
him.  No appeal is possible.  Thus Xavier became the first 
District Deputy to be expelled from the Assembly in its 
thirteen-year history.  Afterward, some of his PMDB 
colleagues tried vainly to annul the vote, but the expulsion 
became official on August 10.  In addition to losing his 
Assembly seat, Xavier loses his "political rights" and cannot 
run in any election until 2014.  He will be tried for murder 
in a common court along with his co-defendants. 
 
"CRICKETING" - BRASILIA'S OLDEST PROFESSION 
------------------------------------------- 
¶5. (SBU) "Cricketing" ("grilagem") is a term that covers a 
range of land crimes from fraudulent zoning to outright land 
theft.  It came by its name because early perpetrators would 
put forged deeds into a box with live crickets, whose 
effluence would yellow the documents and lend them 
authenticity.  Cricketing is particularly common in Brasilia 
because the city has sprung up in forty years on near-empty 
land in Brazil's interior.  Brasilia's real estate and 
development agencies, Terracap and Novacap, administer 
340,000 hectares of public land, privatizing and zoning it as 
necessary.  For decades clever bureaucrats, politicians, and 
builders have found ingenious ways to manipulate the titling 
and zoning processes for immense personal gain.  With their 
enormous profits and low risk, land frauds are at the heart 
of most of Brasilia's scandals and are the basis for the 
personal fortunes of many local politicians. 
 
ASSEMBLY NO STRANGER TO CRIMINAL ALLEGATIONS 
-------------------------------------------- 
¶6. (SBU) Thus the Xavier affair no doubt causes some jitters 
among those who would rather not set a precedent of expelling 
accused criminals.  Or as one of Xavier's allies told the 
press, "If you open the gate, the whole herd might get out." 
Among the suspects: 
 
- Benicio Tavares (PMDB), the Assembly Speaker, who uses a 
wheelchair, has built a career as a defender of handicapped 
rights.  Last year he was convicted of embezzling funds from 
the Handicapped Association of Brasilia, of which he was 
President. 
 
- Wigberto Tartuce (PP). The "Big Vig" resigned as Brasilia's 
Labor Secretary in 1999 under fire for embezzling millions 
from unemployment programs and laundering it through offshore 
accounts linked to the "Banestado" scandal.  His tenure at 
the Secretariat has so far resulted in 42 investigations, and 
Tartuce has been ordered to repay over US$ 1.5 million.  In 
June, a judge ordered him to pay back a US$ 370,000 gambling 
debt he ran up in four days in a Bahamian casino. 
 
- Jose Edmar (PMDB), jailed for a month in 2003 during a land 
fraud investigation called "Operation Cricket".  Edmar, who 
now fortuitously chairs the Assembly's Land Affairs 
Committee, has threatened to kill Tartuce, whose backroom 
maneuvers he blames for landing him in jail. 
 
- Pedro Passos (PMDB), chairs the Justice Committee.  A crony 
of Governor Roriz, together and separately they have been 
subjects of many land fraud allegations.  In 1995, an 
Assembly investigation called him Brasilia's "greatest land 
predator".  In 2002, he was convicted of land fraud in a case 
that is now on appeal.  A 2003 case for stealing land in 
public parks has yet to come to trial. 
 
- Junior Brunelli (PP), started his cricketing career as an 
evangelical church leader selling plots of land in heaven. 
In April, he was in line to fill the urgent vacancy as Chair 
of the Ethics Committee, which was then in the middle of the 
Xavier case, until it emerged that he was under investigation 
on suspicion that, during the 2002 campaign, he set up an 
amateurish gang that intimidated opponents and murdered a 
man.  In early 2004, Brunelli was allegedly behind the 
murders of two of the gang members to silence them.  The 
police investigation continues, but the District Assembly 
thought it prudent not to make Brunelli the Ethics Committee 
Chairman. 
 
- Odilon Aires and Gim Argello (PMDB).  Odilon was caught on 
tape in 2002 complaining that his bribe for processing a huge 
block of fraudulent land titles was only 50 lots, whereas Gim 
Argello (now the Vice-Speaker) received 200.  The Assembly's 
Ethics Committee buried the case. 
 
- Luiz Estevao (PMDB), no longer in the Assembly because he 
was elected to the federal Senate in 2000, and then expelled 
the next year when his construction firm was caught engaging 
in massive overcharging and contract fixing on the 1999 
construction of a Sao Paulo courthouse. 
 
- Jose Tatico (PTB), elected Federal Deputy after serving 
three terms in the District Assembly.  Caught using Assembly 
funds to pay employees at a supermarket he owns, he was given 
an ethics warning. 
 
¶7. (SBU) No Brasilia politician has ever been seriously 
punished for corruption and many are reelected even after 
their misdeeds become public.  Some, like Estevao, Tatico, 
and Jose Roberto Arruda (a Federal Deputy who in 2002 won the 
most votes in Brasilia's history a year after he resigned 
from the Senate in a scandal), even make it to the federal 
Congress.  Ruminating on Carlos Xavier's expulsion, Federal 
Deputy Maninha (PT-Brasilia) doubts that there will be a 
domino effect of other expulsions because the Deputies have 
the goods on each other.  "There won't be a second Carlos 
Xavier in the short-term", she says, "these Deputies are 
living archives, and now they'll be shut tight.  Morality 
will only come with popular pressure." 
 
 
COMMENT - DISTRICT ASSEMBLY CAN'T GET ANY WORSE 
--------------------------------------------- -- 
¶8. (SBU) Brasilia's District Assembly has never been known 
for the high quality of its work.  In the first three months 
of 2004 alone, Governor Roriz vetoed 40 of the Assembly's 
bills  because they were unconstitutional on their face. 
After long debate, the Assembly in February passed one bill 
to create a fishing pond for the unemployed to catch their 
dinners and another that would build public bathrooms 
exclusively for gays (both were vetoed).  The Assembly spent 
months choosing a wolf as Brasilia's official animal after 
the first choice, a type of fish, was black-listed when it 
was discovered to be a hermaphroditic species.  Workers' 
Party (PT) freshman Deputy Erika Kokay has lost her taste for 
the legislature, saying she will not run for reelection in 
2006, "I have no intention of staying here.  This place is a 
non-entity." 
 
¶9. (SBU) Given the gravity of the charges against him, it is 
encouraging that Carlos Xavier was expelled.  But it seems 
unlikely that the case is the tip of the iceberg in terms of 
cleaning up the District Assembly.  His colleagues voted him 
out by the narrowest majority and Brasilia's voters have 
remarkably short memories where corruption is concerned.  It 
is not at all clear whether the Xavier affair is a resounding 
blow against impunity for Brazilian politicians, a small step 
in the right direction, or merely serves to draw a tremulous 
red line:  that murderers, at least, will not be tolerated in 
Brasilia's legislature. 
DANILOVICH