Territorial expansion of the militia in the West Zone of Rio may be behind the murder of Marielle Franco

Former PM Ronnie Lessa, in his statement, named those behind the murder of councilor Marielle Franco. This Sunday, a PF operation arrested three suspects: Domingos Brazão, advisor to the State Court of Auditors, Chiquinho Brazão, federal deputy from Rio de Janeiro, and Rivaldo Barbosa, former head of the Civil Police of Rio de Janeiro. Lessa’s statement also revealed the motivation for the crime, which occurred in March 2018. The dispute over land in the West Zone of Rio, motivated by the expansion of the militia, may be behind the crime.

• Who are Chiquinho and Domingos Brazão, brothers arrested today accused of having Marielle killed
• Marielle’s mother and sister comment on the operation: ‘The biggest surprise in all of this was the arrest of Rivaldo Barbosa’, says Marinete

The former PM has been imprisoned since March 2019 and is identified as the author of the shots that killed the parliamentarian and her driver, Anderson Gomes, who was driving the car at the time of the attack.

According to Lessa, Marielle had become a victim for defending the occupation of land by low-income people and that the process was monitored by bodies such as the Institute of Land and Cartography of the State of Rio (Iterj) and the Land and Housing Center, of the Defender’s Office. Rio Public.

According to him, the people behind the murder named by Lessa were seeking the regularization of an entire condominium in the Jacarepaguá region, in the West Zone of the city, without respecting the criteria of area of ​​social interest, that is, the owner had an income higher than that predicted in law. The objective would be to obtain the property title for real estate speculation.

Marielle was executed on March 14, 2018. As she left Casa das Pretas, on Rua dos Inválidos, in the center of Rio. As she passed through the Estácio neighborhood, in the central region of the city, the car she was in was the target of shots fired by a vehicle that paired. The councilor and driver Anderson died when they were hit. The parliamentarian’s advisor, Fernanda Chaves, is the only survivor.

Elected councilor by PSol, with more than 46 thousand votes, Marielle had only been in office for 1 year and 3 months, when she took office in January 2017, before being executed.

Who ordered Marielle Franco to be killed?

The Federal Police launch an operation this Sunday to execute arrest warrants against the alleged perpetrators of the murders of councilor Marielle Franco and driver Anderson Gomes. Among the targets of the action are federal deputy Chiquinho Brazão, advisor to the State Court of Auditors Domingos Brazão and delegate Rivaldo Barbosa, who headed the Rio Civil Police.

Federal deputy Chiquinho Brazão (União Brasil), brother of the counselor of the State Court of Auditors (TCE) Domingos Brazão, held the position of municipal secretary of Community Action at Rio’s city hall until February this year, when he asked for dismissal after the first rumors about his possible participation in the crime.

Chiquinho spent just four months in charge of the department before resuming his mandate in the Chamber of Deputies, in Brasília. The fact that he has the mandate of federal deputy would be the motivation for Lessa’s complaint to have been sent to the Federal Supreme Court, where it was approved last Tuesday.

Domingos Brazão was mentioned during the investigations years before appearing in the statements of Élcio de Queiroz and Ronnie Lessa, the most recent. In 2019, the Attorney General of the Republic, Raquel Dodge, asked the Superior Court of Justice (STJ) for access to the investigation into the murder of the councilor and her driver to determine whether there were “indications of intellectual authorship” on the part of Domingos. The request was to determine whether he had used the structure of his public position to obstruct investigations into the case. At the time, he called the accusation “absurd.”

The brothers Domingos and Chiquinho Brazão have long lived with controversies and accusations surrounding their political-business activities in Rio. Throughout his 25 years of public life, Domingos has been involved in suspicions of corruption, fraud, administrative improbity, vote buying and even homicide.

Former police chief Rivaldo Barbosa took office in March 2018. He was chosen for the position by General Richard Nunes, at the time Secretary of Public Security, and federal interventionist General Walter Souza Braga Netro. During this period, Rio was under federal intervention.

It was Rivaldo who gave the DH delegate the information that the Federal Police delegates had managed to find a supposed witness in the case, the then military police officer Rodrigo Ferreira, known as Ferreirinha. But the version was false, as was confirmed 10 months later, in a parallel investigation by the Federal Police, which became known as the “investigation of the investigation”.