Brazilian president Michel Temer’s latest cabinet reshuffle has not been very encouraging or in accordance with his survival abilities so far.
In effect the candidate named as future minister of Labor had to reach a debt payment deal with a driver that provided services to the family, and the politician who will be replacing her in Congress was sentenced for raping minors.
The future minister belonging to a coalition party, Cristiane Brasil, was ordered to pay a labor debt to a driver who provided services to her family for three years. She also signed an agreement with another driver in order to prevent new adverse judgment.
Both cases were closed this year, and she was ordered to pay a total of 74,000 reais (US$ 22,000). The amount is related to overtime, vacation, 13th month salary, unemployment benefit fund, severance pay and fines. The case was revealed by the website G1.
The proceeding against Cristiane Brasil was filed by driver Fernando Fernandes Dias. He claims he had worked for the future minister of labor between November 2011 and December 2014 without any records in his work and social security card. The driver also claims he had to work 19 hours a day, five times a week.
Cristiane Brasil did not testify and sent a representative to the hearing, who was not fully aware of the facts. The award was calculated at 60,500 reais (US$ 18,700) and has not been fully paid.
Driver Leonardo Eugênio de Almeida Moreira worked for the congresswoman’s family between June 2014 and October 2015. He claims he was hired without any records in his work and social security card and that he was dismissed without severance pay.
Congress woman Cristiane Brasil is the daughter of the leader of the government-allied Brazilian Labor Party, Roberto Jefferson.
She will be replaced in Congress by Nelson Nahim, 60, who was sentenced to 12 years in prison in 2016 after a judge found him guilty of submitting a 15-year-old girl to prostitution, rape and intimidating behavior.
Nahim was a regular client at a prostitution ring in which girls were kept against their will, drugged and forced to have sex, according to the prosecutor’s allegations.
He was accused of having sex with two 15-year-old girls and sentenced to 12 years in prison. However, he only served four months of his sentence after he successfully appealed at the Supreme Court.
Nahim, who is a member of President Temer’s Democratic Movement Party will take his seat in the legislative next month, after Congress returns from recess.
It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of children in Brazil are trapped in prostitution either by economic necessity, threats of violence by pimps and criminals, or drug addiction.
Mercopress