Senator-elect Deltan Dallagnol says Banco do Brasil, the state-controlled bank, gave him 24 hours to delete a video criticizing its management and threatened civil and criminal action, a claim he tied to cases against right-wing lawmakers at the Supreme Court.
BRASILIA — Deltan Dallagnol, the former Car Wash prosecutor who won a Senate seat for Paraná in the October elections, says Banco do Brasil threatened him with criminal prosecution for criticizing the bank, Diário do Poder reported. In a video posted on Saturday, Dallagnol, a member of the Novo party, said the state-controlled lender sent him a notification demanding that he delete a video critical of its management within 24 hours, or face civil and even criminal action.
“Instead of answering the numbers, the bank chose to sue me, accuse me, threaten me with civil and criminal proceedings. Prison,” he said. His warning to viewers was blunt: if senators and deputies with constitutional immunity for their speech can be censored, “imagine what the system can do with you.”
Why it matters
Banco do Brasil is one of the largest state-controlled banks in Latin America, and its president is appointed by the Lula regime. A public institution, funded and directed by the executive, is accused of reaching for criminal law against an elected senator who criticized it. In the United States that would be a First Amendment story, and a loud one. Brazil’s Constitution protects the speech of parliamentarians in the exercise of their mandate, which is the protection Dallagnol says is being tested before he has even taken office.
He placed the episode in a wider pattern. Dallagnol cited elected deputies Marcel van Hattem (Novo-RS) and Gustavo Gayer (PL-GO), who have faced legal proceedings over statements about authorities, and said that more than 80 percent of the Supreme Court cases against parliamentarians that he reviewed, 46 involving online posts and protests, targeted the right. That figure is his own research, and the court has not endorsed it. He also criticized Senate President Davi Alcolumbre for failing to defend lawmakers’ free speech and used the episode to back Senator Rogério Marinho’s bid to lead the chamber.
The record
What is on the record: Dallagnol’s account of the notification and the 24-hour deadline, given in his own video. What is not: the text of the notification itself, which the reports reviewed do not reproduce, and any statement from Banco do Brasil. The coverage carries no response from the bank, so whether it described its demand as a legal warning, a takedown request or something else is unknown. The claim of a threat of imprisonment is Dallagnol’s characterization, not a finding.
The question for the new Senate is whether a state bank can use the threat of the criminal code against a lawmaker who audits it. Banco do Brasil can settle part of this by publishing the notification. Until it does, the senator-elect’s account is the only one on the table, and the pattern he describes, institutions answering criticism with legal pressure instead of data, is the one American readers should be watching.
The Watch Post Daily will continue to follow this story. Sources: Diário do Poder, AR News.
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Featured image: Fachada do edifício sede do Banco do Brasil em Brasília by Agência Senado, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.
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