At the 3rd meeting of the PPI board, in August 2017, the concession was approved as an operational modality for its privatization. The service modeling studies were carried out by the BNDES and, after approval by the TCU, the auction notice 03/18-PPI/PND was launched.
Despite being preceded by all the necessary studies and endorsements by regulatory and controlling bodies, the privatization process was questioned in the popular action, whose defendants were composed, at the time, of high-ranking figures of the Republic, such as former President Michel Temer, the then Minister of Finance Eduardo Refinetti Guardia, the secretaries of the PPI and the National Treasury Moreira Franco and Mansueto Almeida, the president of the BNDES, Dyogo Oliveira, and the Superintendent of the Privatization and Projects Area, Rodolfo Torres dos Santos.
In the popular action, the political decision to privatize the instant lottery operation service was questioned, which, in the view of the author of the action, was essential and could not be the object of privatization, as well as the parameters defined by the modeling studies and by and regulatory frameworks.
In the end, the popular author argued that privatization would damage the treasury by suppressing revenues from this service and would violate the principles of economic order by excluding CEF from participating in the competition. For these reasons, the declaration of nullity of auction notice 03/18-PPI/PND was requested.
Denied the injunction that aimed to suspend the auction and presented the corresponding contestations, the 1st degree magistrate judged the action extinct without resolution on the merits, understanding that the subsequent cancellation of the public notice due to lack of interested parties in the auction leads to the loss of the object of the action, although a new public notice, launched after that deserted auction, led to a winning consortium.
Submitted to the TRF of the 1st region through necessary review, the 6th panel upheld the sentence based on abundant case law that considers the loss of the object of the action in these hypotheses.
The lawyers Sergio Rabello Tamm Renault and Marcelo Augusto Puzone Gonçalves, from the Tojal | Renault Advogados sponsors the defense of Minister Eduardo Refinetti Guardia in the cause.
Source: Migalhas
