Report Highlights PGR’s Insufficient Commitment to Prosecute Health Crimes Amidst the Pandemic
During the Covid-19 pandemic, several health crimes were committed by public authorities, which resulted in the catastrophic number of more than 700,000 deaths from the disease. A Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry was established during the isolation period and investigated the crimes.
With the dust settling and the biggest concerns about the coronavirus already in the past, professor Deisy Ventura, from the Faculty of Public Health at USP, together with the Center for Health Law Studies and Research and the NGO Conectas, conducted research to find out whether crimes committed against the population were duly held accountable.
Impunity
Deisy says that the motivation for the study arose from the feeling of impunity regarding the cases investigated by the CPI of the pandemic. After investigations, 10 cases were sent to the Attorney General’s Office, but requests via the Access to Information Law filed by the study group on the cases were all denied. Therefore, the group needed to conduct studies independently.
“We discovered that 14 criminal petitions and two investigations are still open, so there is still time for impunity not to occur. On the other hand, we qualitatively analyzed the opinions made by the Attorney General’s Office in the previous administration and pointed out serious problems in these opinions”, explains the professor.
The danger of opinions
Including the cases investigated by the CPI, 63 criminal petitions related to health crimes committed during the pandemic are subject to privileged jurisdiction. For the researcher, impunity in health crimes opens up dangerous prerogatives: “If the theses of these opinions prevail, we will never again be able to punish a crime against public health and a health infraction, because, according to those documents, practically nothing is crime. So, we carried out this analysis, which also invites the reopening of several of these processes or the opening of new processes”, discusses the professor.
Optimistic horizon
Despite the dangerous opinions, a change of view of the PGR, motivated by the change of Attorney General, could bring new perspectives on the cases analyzed: “The new prosecutor has already declared to the press a few times that he intended to review this issue”, explains the researcher.
However, justice must also come from civil charges: “We want to mobilize society, other academic colleagues to help us push this issue. We really can’t let it go”, adds professor Deisy Ventura.