October 11, 2021

11:10

Gabriel Abreu – from Cenarium

MANAUS – For more than seven months, the Court of Amazonas (TJAM) analyzes the request for arrest of the mayor of Manaus, David Almeida (Avante), for embezzlement and fraud. At the time, the judge Délcio Santos considered that the Court had no competence to judge the case, but the Federal Court returned the process to the local Judiciary understanding the competence to judge this petition.

The request was made in January by the Public Ministry of Amazonas (MP-AM) in the action that denounces irregularities in the application of the vaccine and the favoring of people who would have jumped the queue of the priority group of the vaccination against Covid-19. The body also denounces a fraudulent scheme of hiring in the municipal health network, asking for the removal of David Almeida, the municipal secretary of Health, Shadia Fraxe, and 19 more municipal servers.

The advice of the TJAM reported, through a note, that the process is under wraps and gave no further details about the person responsible for judging the action in the body. Sought, the Public Ministry of Amazonas (MP-AM) did not comment on the matter until the publication of the report.

Fraud and embezzlement

In action signed by the MP-AM prosecutor, Armando Gurgel Maia, the Group for Action and Combating Organized Crime (Gaeco), David Almeida is suspected of committing the crimes of fraud and embezzlement, provided in Articles 299 and 312 of the Penal Code, respectively. Together, the crimes can give up to 17 years in prison.

According to the prosecutor and based on documentary evidence and app messages, the mayor of Manaus entered a false statement when appointing doctors to perform medical activity. The position determined in the hiring was a “Project Manager”.

Armando Gurgel also said that at least 10 doctors were benefited, within a “select group”, composed of people with political and economic-financial connections of political and electoral support to the mayor. The race for the formalization of the positions occurred coinciding with the period of the beginning of immunization against Covid-19 in Manaus.

“We arrived at the evidence of misrepresentation and embezzlement because of the hiring of doctors as project managers, receiving a salary higher than the previous public calls for doctors to act in the pandemic”, said the prosecutor in a video sent to the press at the time of the formalization of the denunciation.

The executors

Gurgel also explained that the secretary Shadia Fraxe and the advisor Djalma Pinheiro Pessoa Coelho served as “material executors” of the necessary acts to practice the ideological falsehood, “perpetrated by the head of the Municipal Executive Power”.

With this, the investigation of Gaeco points evidence of affront to the priority queue, held at the Family Health Unit (USF) Santos Dumont, in the neighborhood Da Paz, Midwest zone, where doses of the immunizer were applied in Shadia Fraxe, the undersecretary of municipal health, Luiz Claudio de Lima Cruz, and the municipal secretary of Cleaning, Sabá Reis.

The group also found affront to the queue of priorities in the immunization of twins Isabelle and Gabrielle Kirk Maddy Lins in Basic Health Unit (UBS) Nilton Lins, in the south-central zone of Manaus. They, and three other doctors, were hired as project managers, but were working in the care of patients in the unit when they received the first dose of vaccine. The two were exonerated when the case came to light.

Businessmen vaccinated

The prosecutor also confirmed what was pointed out by several news portals in the city, that businessmen and “partners” of the Manaus City Hall jumped the immunization queue at Covid-19.

In the criminal action, the prosecutor cites that were vaccinated the lawyer Tamyres Kutchma de Albuquerque, the businessman from the branch of food supply to the public power, Bento Martins de Souza, and his wife, Jane Pereira de Souza.