Supreme Court injunction protects firms under investigation in Covid hearings

Emanuela Medrades, an executive at Precisa Medicamentos. Photo: Edilson Rodrigues/SF

The Brazilian Supreme Court granted injunctions to two companies investigated by the Senate’s Covid hearings committee to prevent their bank secrecy from being lifted, as the committee had previously approved.

DR7 was alleged in cahoots with Amazonas state government officials suspected of wrongdoing during the pandemic. Justice Nunes Marques ruled that the request for lifting its banking, fiscal, telephone, and telematic secrecy, however, was “broad, generic, hasty, and without legal basis.”
One of the partners at 6M Participações is Francisco Maximiano. He also owns Precisa Medicamentos, the company which mediated the Health Ministry’s purchase of 20 million doses of the Covaxin vaccine from Indian lab Bharat Biotech. The deal was canceled after corruption allegations surfaced, which also led President Jair Bolsonaro to be investigated for malfeasance.

In granting the injunction in favor of Francisco Maximiano, Justice Edson Fachin prohibited telephone and telematic confidentiality breaches but permitted fiscal and banking breaches. He argued that banking and tax records were enough for the committee to determine possible wrongdoing.

Janaína Camelo

Janaína Camelo has been a political reporter for ten years, working for multiple media outlets. More recently, she worked for the presidency's press service and is now specializing in data journalism.