Editor’s Note: Translated from the Portuguese original.
From: Correio Braziliense
Meeting promoted by Correio Braziliense will bring together journalists, specialists and politicians involved in the country’s Public Security. Subscriptions are open
Next Tuesday (15/8) will be held the seminar “Brazil we want: united by the end of contraband and criminality.” The event, promoted by Correio Braziliense, will be attended by the Minister of Justice and Public Security, Torquato Jardim, Deputy Efraim Filho (DEM / PB), the Minister of the Court of Auditors João Augusto Nardes, the coordinator of the Movement Market Legal, Edson Vismona and the journalist and director of the Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism (ABRAJI), Mauri König, who will discuss how to solve the problem of the illegal market, which causes the insecurity that oppresses Brazil.
For Mauri König, discussing this topic is extremely important because it affects the daily lives of people. “Citizens do not realize how they are led by this,” he says. “It is very cultural the acceptance of contraband as something natural of the everyday and the understanding of this type of crime as something normal, when it should not be like this,” he warned. König says he will address the smuggling of cigarettes on Brazilian borders, based on work he has already produced on the subject, such as the award-winning report ‘The Empire of Ashes’.
Smuggling and counterfeiting were responsible for losses of R $ 130 billion to the country last year. With cigarette smuggling alone, tax evasion accumulated between 2011 and 2016 amounted to R $ 30.2 billion. According to König, the cigarette is one of the flagship cars smuggling along the border, following the same route used by drug traffickers. One in four cigarettes consumed in Brazil is smuggled.
In order to discuss more efficient ways of combating piracy in Brazil, the ‘Brazil that we want’ campaign was created, a partnership between the federal government and the Joint Parliamentary Front to Combat Contraband and Counterfeiting and the Movement in Defense of the Brazilian Legal Market , Coordinated by the Brazilian Institute of Competitive Ethics (ETCO) and the National Forum Against Piracy and Illegality (FNCP), together with more than 70 business entities and civil society organizations.
