The signing of the contract between the Brazilian Army and the Italian company CIO, the company that won the tender for the purchase of 98 8×8 combat vehicles with its Centauro II model, was scheduled for yesterday, however a precautionary measure, presented a day earlier, stopped the process immediately.
The popular action that triggered the paralysis of the tender was presented by Charles Capella de Abreu, who was part of the government of former President Dilma Roussef, before the Federal Regional Court of Region I (TRF-1) and endorsed by Judge Wilson Alves de Souza.
“The aforementioned purchase, when the lights of the current Government are turned off and in the face of the calamitous state in which other areas of greater urgency find themselves, represents a true violation of public morals,” the lawsuit maintains. Cappella says half of the 5 billion reais ($946 million) he says the contract would amount to comes from cuts in other areas, such as health ($272 million) and education ($264 million).
For his part, the judge endorsed Cappella’s arguments. “In this context, it is clear that the act attacked does not respond to the assumptions of convenience and opportunity, since the lack of reasonableness, deviation, illegality and even elementary common sense are evident, since there is no other qualification when at the same time that education and health budgets are cut for lack of money, if you intend to buy weapons in peacetime,” the magistrate said in the precautionary measure.