Open investigations into a meatpacking cartel could turn the murder case of businessman Adélcio Haubert, former vice-mayor of Santa Maria do Herval, into a judicial imbroglio.
Photo: Disclosure
The defense of Santa Catarina businessman Cristiano de Bem Cardoso, 44, accused of ordering the murder, brings to light enigmatic details and reveals that he will request the suspension of criminal proceedings until they are investigated. He maintains his client’s innocence and suggests that Haubert’s death was a file burning ordered by a meat industry mafia.
“As logical as it may be, this possible motivation was not properly investigated, which causes us indignation and perplexity. Once proven, it excludes Cristiano and casts suspicion on other people”, declares lawyer Cláudio Rodrigues Neto. Amid inconsistencies highlighted in the police investigation, he claims that there was even a false anonymous report to the Police to accuse Cardoso. The suspension will be requested this Tuesday at the Dois Irmãos forum, in the appeal against last month’s court decision that made the businessman a defendant.
The day
Haubert was shot in the living room of his home, in Santa Maria do Herval, on the night of October 21, 2020, and died five days later in hospital. He was 65 years old. His wife, who was watching television next door, was injured by fragments of the projectiles.
“Now, the morning after the attack, the victim would be interviewed by the Public Ministry regarding an investigation against a meat-packing cartel. Everything indicates that he would give a scathing testimony. It remains to be seen in the process who would be harmed within this powerful group, which certainly wasn’t Cristiano”, emphasizes Rodrigues Neto.
Slaughterhouse mafia is involved in secret action
The investigation into the cartel, initiated in 2015 by the Special Action Group to Combat Organized Crime (Gaeco) of the MP, became a legal process in October 2021 in the district of Lajeado. There are businesspeople and employees in the sector reported, from different regions of the State.
The Prosecutor’s Office handles the case with absolute confidentiality. “In relation to these investigations or proceedings, they are under judicial secrecy. The MP cannot disclose absolutely anything in relation to this matter so as not to defy a court order”, the agency declared to the reporter. According to witnesses, the center of the accusation involves the division of territory (squares), routes and product prices. In other words, typical cartel practice.
“The defense is doing the job that should be done by the prosecution”
The lawyer considers the MP’s decision to denounce Cardoso and two others investigated last month surprising and contradictory.
Photo: Disclosure
“In February, with the approval of the Public Ministry itself, the judge accepted our request to request the records of the cartel case and hear those under investigation in order to exhaust all possibilities regarding authorship and motivation. It is difficult to understand how, the following month, without any of these steps being taken, the Public Prosecutor’s Office decided to file a complaint”, observes Rodrigues Neto.
The complaint, made by the Estância Velha prosecutor, Bruno Carpes, who had recently taken over the case, was accepted on the 19th of last month by the judge of Dois Irmãos, Miguel Carpi Nejar.
Cardoso was denounced as having ordered the murder because of an alleged debt of R$10 million owed to the victim, due to the purchase of the Boa Vista meat processing plant, in Santa Maria do Herval, in May 2018, when Haubert’s company was in judicial recovery. .
According to the complaint, the man from Santa Catarina ordered the death because he was bothered by insistent demands from the former owner of the business. The defense considers the thesis “fragile and based on conclusions”.
“This debt is debatable and the two got along well. Cristiano would have no advantage with the victim’s death, because any debt would go to the heirs. In relation to the cartel, Cristiano was never a suspect, especially because, when the investigation began, he didn’t even know or think about purchasing the victim’s refrigerator.”
According to Rodrigues Neto, the MP himself had understood, during the investigations, that the cartel aspect was not being investigated. “So much so that it wasn’t. Therefore, it is necessary to urgently suspend the process so that the facts can be properly investigated. As incredible as it may seem, the defense is doing the job that should be done by the prosecution.”
According to the complaint, Cardoso hired Silvio Soares das Chagas, 48, who recruited Jôni André Haubert, 34, and another unidentified man, for the execution. Jôni was the victim’s second cousin.
“I’m innocent and I’m going to prove it,” Chagas told the reporter. Jôni, through lawyer Fábio Adams, also denies involvement. “The accusation against him is absurd. And there is a lot of evidence that points to other people who had motivation to commit the crime. During the investigation of the case, these situations will certainly be demonstrated, especially evidence that went incredibly unnoticed during the investigation”, says Adams.
Anonymous complaint has bizarre coincidences
A businessman from Greater Florianópolis who boasts friendship with nationally successful country artists, Cristiano Cardoso would have joined the list of suspects following an anonymous call to the Police directing him to coordinate the crime.
The phone call, made during the investigation, brings together startling coincidences. The man who called was the man then being investigated as Haubert’s executor, considered a cartel killer. In contact, he said he was a resident of the Mathias Velho neighborhood, in Canoas, and told a version that excluded him from the crime.
He used a false telephone line registration, in the name of a woman who supplied cattle to the Boa Vista slaughterhouse, and ended up being discovered by the Police as the author of the anonymous complaint because his phone was tapped, as a suspect in the execution. During the interceptions, conversations between him and other people were captured about his contact with the Police to throw off the investigation.
