Singer Joelma has a valid passport; judge sees decision as ‘extreme’

with Estadão Conteúdo, From the Newsroomi

with Estadão Conteúdo, From the Editorial Team – https://istoe.com.br/autor/da-redacao/

03/22/2024 – 13:40

Judge Maria Clara Saboya Albuquerque Bernardino, from the Labor Court of the 6th Region, released the singer’s passport Joelma, which had been blocked by a first degree decision. The judge suspended the order, on the night of this Thursday, 21st, considering the measure “extreme, disproportionate and unnecessary”.

The decision rendered null and void was made in the context of a labor action, in the execution phase, in which Joelma and the company she maintained with her ex-husband, Ximbinha, were ordered to pay more than R$1 million to a former manager of the band Calypso.

Judge Gustavo Augusto Pires de Oliveira based the order blocking the singer’s passport on the “repeated frustration” of measures taken by the court to execute the conviction. He argued that Joelma was “hiding from the Judiciary at a time when she continues to boast a high standard of living resulting from her fame”.

Joelma’s defense appealed to the TRT-6, in a habeas corpus, claiming that the first decision “violated the constitutional right to come and go, as well as to exercise one’s profession”. The appeal was accepted by judge Maria Clara Saboya Albuquerque Bernardino.

In an order signed on the night of Thursday, 21st, the judge highlighted that the seizure of a passport “requires an unequivocal demonstration of sufficient elements to justify it”. For Maria Clara, there is no such demonstration in Joelma’s case: “for example, ostentatious wealth or malicious action aimed at frustrating the execution to avoid paying the labor debt”.

“Otherwise, the aforementioned measure would, in fact, prove to be a mere punitive measure, which is devoid of adequacy, reasonableness and proportionality, in addition to achieving a fundamental right, embodied in the debtors’ freedom of movement”, he noted.

Maria Clara highlighted that the role of the Labor Court to determine the collection of a passport is “exceptional”. “The act does not represent a constriction of physical or intellectual assets capable of resolving ongoing labor claims as it does not have any economic character,” she explained.

Along these lines, the judge considered that there are no grounds for the order to restrict Joelma’s passport. “In the Labor Court, the seizure must always be effective, with impertinent ineffective acts of application analogous to the case of passport retention, which are not effective for execution”, she pointed out.

Defense

Lawyer Luiz Felicio Jorge, who represents Joelma, spoke about the case: “The decision of the Labor Court recognized that the ban on leaving the country, blocking the passport and prohibiting the issuance of a new document would not bring effective results to the execution labor, being a mere punitive measure, which is prohibited by the Federal Constitution, the American Convention on Human Rights and the Pact of Saint Joseph of Costa Rica, which enshrine freedom of movement and the right to enter and leave the country as a fundamental right. In this case, it was recognized that this was not a trip to show off wealth, as Joelma was working abroad, and there was no adequacy, reasonableness and proportionality in the decision made and that it was correctly rejected”.