MATEUS VARGAS AND FLÁVIO FERREIRA
BRASÍLIA, DF, AND SÃO PAULO, SP (FOLHAPRESS)
President of the federal state-owned company Codevasf, engineer Marcelo Moreira issued a rule suspending the power of the state-owned company’s superintendencies to bar companies from bidding.
Moreira determined that this type of penalty must be approved by Codevasf directors, that is, it can no longer be applied directly by the state-owned units in the states.
Codevasf (Companhia de Desenvolvimento dos Vales do São Francisco e do Parnaíba) was handed over by then president Jair Bolsonaro (PL) to the center and is maintained in this way by Lula (PT) in exchange for support in Congress. It drains funds from parliamentary amendments into paving and machinery works.
The new rule from Codevasf management was imposed in May, when the president of the state-owned company acted to reverse a punishment given to RCP Serviços de Engenharia by the company’s superintendence in Maranhão. The board of directors of the federal state-owned company is made up of Moreira and three other members.
The Codevasf regional office had prevented RCP from bidding and signing contracts with the company for two years due to the total non-execution of a paving contract – the punishment was reduced to two months.
The R$1.43 million work for paving in an interlocking concrete block in the municipality of São José de Ribamar (MA) had not even started, but the RCP claimed that the increase in the price of inputs and the Covid-19 health crisis made the service unfeasible and appealed to the presidency of Codevasf.
Codevasf did not pay RCP for the work. Bodies linked to the state-owned company’s command then suggested reviewing the penalty.
The contract inspector had recommended the punishment when pointing out “disregard” with the service, “making an attempt to encumber the object, being a fraud on the bidding process to add value without the actual beginning of the work”, in addition to causing harm to the population.
To suggest the change in punishment, Moreira’s team argued that the company has more than 20 contracts signed with Codevasf, exceeding R$50 million, mainly for services in Ceará.
The penalty could disrupt other works, according to the state company’s command.
Codevasf management also stated that RCP was awaiting payments of R$4.4 million from the state-owned company on the date of the penalty. This credit could be an “indicator of financial difficulty” in executing the contract, stated a company order.
“This fact suggests that the contractor, by not performing the services provided for in the contract, did not act with the intention of causing losses to Codevasf, but was simply facing a situation of doubt regarding the conditions of feasibility of the contract”, the technical area of the department also said. .
In another statement, the legal advisor to the Codevasf presidency considered that the punishment could be reduced based on the “principle of public administration self-protection”.
During the analysis of the appeal presented by RCP, the president of Codevasf informed the superintendents that the power of the company’s regional units to withdraw companies from bidding was suspended.
Moreira pointed out, in this order, that the objective of the new rule was “to improve the management and monitoring, by headquarters, of the qualification conditions of contracted companies”.
“Preventing this impediment from harming other contracts and amendments already signed with the same company, in other states”, the document also says.
The president of the state-owned company informed that the local manager’s power to impose warnings, fines and contract termination was preserved.
It is common for Codevasf superintendencies to decide to remove companies from bidding as punishment.
In April, the Maranhão unit took this measure against Construservice, a company that is at the center of corruption suspicions raised by the Federal Police during the Bolsonaro government and which this year affected the current Minister of Communications, Juscelino Filho (União Brasil-MA ).
The two-year penalty applied by the state-owned company to Construservice was motivated precisely by a work carried out with Juscelino’s amendment funds. The PF’s suspicions, however, refer to other services from the same company, also indicated by Lula’s minister, who denies any irregularity.
In the case of RCP, the superintendency in Maranhão accepted the arguments raised by Codevasf management and reduced the company’s impediment to bidding and contracting with the company to two months.
It also reduced the fine from R$143 thousand to R$71.6 thousand.
The regional unit, however, considered that the company had not raised the argument that it has funds to receive from Codevasf. This point was brought to the process by the company’s management itself.
In a note sent to the report, RCP says that it won the bid in December 2020, but the work order was issued 15 months later. The worsening of the pandemic and the increase in prices during this period caused an “economic imbalance” and made the execution of the contract unfeasible, the company further stated.
“There was no negligence in relation to the contract and the search for financial rebalancing cannot be interpreted as ‘fraud of the bidding process’, since it was based on unexpected facts”, declared the RCP.
Codevasf said, in a note, that it changed the rules on punishments for companies to allow the company’s “central structure” to “evaluate the potential impact of a penalty proposed by a certain regional superintendent on contracts maintained by other superintendences”.
“The prior assessment of the impact of a sanction on works carried out in different units of the federation is essential for the company to adopt the measure most favorable to the public interest in each case”, said the state-owned company.
He also stated that the changes in internal procedures “are the result of collegiate decisions, taken by the company’s executive board”
The post Codevasf under Lula empties power from managers and centralizes punishments amid suspicions appeared first in Jornal de Brasília.
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