Without elements indicating intentional personal promotion, the 4th Federal Civil Court of the Federal District refused and annulled a brochure from the National Board of the Public Prosecutor’s Office in which there is a photo of Attorney Sandra Krieger Gonçalves, ex. Body advisor.
The lawsuit was filed by prosecutor María Elda Fernández Melo, of the Federal District Prosecutor’s Office. I objected to the brochure “Ben Phifer: Mental Health in Parliament”which was released by the CNMP in 2020. According to the author, there was undue promotion of the image of the public agents involved.
In addition to the creator, the object of the action was the union and the two other officials responsible for the pamphlet: also Attorney General MP-DF Jairo Pesol; and Assistant Secretary General of the CNMP, Rafael Mira Luz, who is the Public Prosecutor of the MP-SC.
The pamphlet, over 60 pages long, sought to educate employees about issues related to mental health. Maria Elda argued that the principles of morality and impersonality were violated by exposing the names of the creators and the image of the creator – which appears on one of the pages.
The author indicated that Sandra was no longer a consultant for the CNMP. Thus, the brochure would have made it possible to expand the clientele of his law firm, which works with medical law.
Logic
Judge Itajiba Kata Preta Neto adopted the arguments presented in the opinion of the Federal Public Prosecution Service. The document in question was signed by Attorney General Paulo Roberto Galvao de Carvalho, who is known for being part of the late “Lava Jet” task force.
For Carvalho, the evidence did not confirm that the pamphlet reached an outside audience, “for eventual gain in the defendants’ personal or professional fields.”
In his statement, the attorney general referred to an administrative action in the CNMP that targeted the same controversy as the action, which ended up being shelved.
On this occasion, the councilors noted that the thematic publications of the CNMP committees usually do not contain personal highlights and photographs of their authors, organizers and collaborators. Thus, the brochure in question would be a “single event”.
The agency also noted that at the time, Sandra was a member of the CNMP’s Health Committee and had already appeared in other publications.
For them, the introduction of the picture did not cause damage to the public property, because its cost was “negligible” in relation to the value of the entire pamphlet.
In addition, other public bodies operate in a similar manner. “A strict and radical understanding would certainly require the removal of all images of public servants from any existing public spaces/buildings,” the advisors noted.
That is, for example, photo galleries of former court ministers, former parliamentarians, former prosecutors of the republic or former prosecutors of MPF units will not be allowed.
“In view of the social propriety of this practice, it cannot be considered unlawful a priori, especially without describing, in a conclusive manner, the intent to enrich the public agent by the promotion which personal exposure in a business or similar public place would bring,” the device settled. For this, a more in-depth measurement of the gains a general agent could have achieved from exposure would be necessary.
Historical
María Elda has been known to perpetrate reprisals against senior management in the MP-DF in recent years, due to personal friction.
Between 2018 and 2020, she filed several disciplinary complaints against the District Commission’s internal affairs team. She was later punished with censorship by the CNMP for abusing the right to file petitions.
In the same context, the Bar Association denounced the Public Prosecutor for committing four crimes of denouncing defamation.
In 2020, it sent a new wave of protests against its enemies directly to Attorney General Julio Marcelo de Oliveira, from the TCU MP, who pushed the complaints forward. Later, Oliveira is referred to by the MP-DF as a friend of María Elda and becomes the target of an investigation in the MPTCU.
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