But such sentiment was not obvious at a recent plastics trade fair that Joinville hosted.

“I heard from one of our members in the plastics engineering sector that a Chinese competitor offered their machinery without asking for a deposit and with payment in 45 monthly installments at a zero-interest rate,” said Thomas Ulbrich, the head of the São Paulo office of Germany’s VDMA, an association which represents around 3,500 German companies working in mechanical engineering. “Our companies just can’t compete with that kind of financing.”

As the VDMA’s representative in Brazil, Ulbrich has noticed the growing influence that Chinese companies are having in his sector. Businesses from Germany and other European nations are having trouble keeping up with Chinese firms.

“The Chinese banks, which have several branches in São Paulo alone, are there mainly to finance projects with Chinese companies,” he said.

By the end of November, Beijing will have added another jewel to the crown that is its successful Latin American strategy. That month, it is expected to sign a bilateral free trade agreement with Ecuador, coinciding with the annual China-Latin America-Caribbean Business Summit in the Ecuadorian port city of Guayaquil.

Between 2000 and 2020, China increased its investments in the region 26-fold. It is now the most important or second-most important trading partner in many Latin American countries, replacing the US or EU.

A generation of Chinese experts in the region

EU diplomat Claudia Gintersdorfer has similar stories to tell about how China has managed to extend its influence throughout the continent over the past two decades.

Currently the head of Americas division at the European External Action Service — the EU’s diplomatic service — she lived in Uruguay and Brazil for four years each and has been doing her EU job for the past three years.

“I was always surprised how well the Chinese ambassadors [in Latin America] spoke Spanish and how well they understood the local mentality. A whole generation of experts was put into action,” she said. “In a way, China has taken our place. Also because the [Chinese] head of state Xi Jinping took the time to phone every Caribbean island himself.”

Part of the Chinese leader’s reason for doing this was to convince Latin American countries of the benefits of China’s international infrastructure and influence project known as the Belt and Road Initiative.

The persuasion worked: 21 out of 33 countries in the region are participating in the initiative, often referred to as a “new Silk Road.”

EU plans charm offensive

With China exerting ever more influence over the world’s most important trade routes, the EU has decided it is time to try and counter the developments.

Europeans want to go on the offensive, both diplomatically and economically. From 2021 to 2027, the EU will be making around € 3.4 billion (US$ 3.38 billion) available to Latin American countries for sustainable and inclusive development. This should gain momentum after a meeting in Buenos Aires in October between foreign ministers from the region and the EU.

However, the bloc has particularly high hopes for the second half of 2023, when Spain, which has stronger relationships with Latin American nations than many other EU member states, will be holding the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union.

“We take each other for granted,” Gintersdorfer suggested, referring to the EU and Latin America. That means that sometimes the partners are not working on the relationship as much as they should be, she said. “But we [the EU] are a partner to be taken seriously, and we’re also a good third alternative. With us, the region doesn’t have to choose between the US and China,” she argued.

Promoting fair, sustainable development

With its investments, Europe wants to help countries in the region recover from the pandemic while simultaneously promoting environmental projects. It also wants to encourage the digital transition in Latin America, for instance through the further development of an underwater fiber-optic communications cable connecting Portugal and Brazil, which was successfully launched in 2021.

“The Baltic states are at the forefront of the digital transformation,” Gintersdorfer said. “This time, countries other than Spain, Portugal and Germany should also get involved.”

It’s all about winning back Latin America’s trust, which suffered during the COVID-19 pandemic when countries there had to wait for a long time to get deliveries of EU-made vaccine.

This was partially because the COVAX initiative, with its aim of getting vaccines around the world in a just and transparent way, didn’t really work the way EU ministers in Brussels had hoped it would. Instead, China and Russia managed to deliver vaccines faster.

Weakened trust is also why EU diplomat Gintersdorfer had to make a significant effort to convince Latin American nations to vote with the EU in condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine at the United Nation’s General Assembly in March.

Happily for Brussels, most of them did vote with the EU. Only Bolivia, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Cuba abstained, and Venezuela did not vote as it is still suspended from the UN for non-payment of dues.

Mercosur trade deal a ‘political signal’

The EU’s current goal is to push back against the influence of Russia and China in Latin America while at the same time significantly improving political and business relationships.

Possibly the best proof of this new attitude is the potential for finalizing a free trade deal with the Mercosur states — a customs union covering Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay — after 20 years of on and off negotiations.

The EU-Mercosur deal could be one of the biggest trade deals in the world, in terms of populations impacted, but there are a number of obstacles that still need to be overcome. In particular, there has been debate in the EU over the effect it will have on the environment in countries like Brazil.

Brazil holds elections in October, and the government there may change significantly, should the present right-wing, conservative president, Jair Bolsonaro, be replaced by former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a left-wing politician who presents himself as a better partner for the EU.

With a change of government in Brazil, the EU-Mercosur trade deal becomes more likely, Gintersdorfer argued.

“We have had a constellation in Latin America that made [the deal] possible, but we Europeans had issues,” she continued. “Many in the EU said that because Bolsonaro is burning the rainforest down, we can’t sign any deals with him. But such a treaty would not just be about trade, it would also be an important political signal.”

DW

However, they say this does not mean that its tropical rainforests are less diverse than previously thought.

“On the contrary, the difference between previous estimates and the current figures from this new study just highlight the huge gap in taxonomy that needs filling”, said Domingos Cardoso, from the Biology Institute at the Federal University of Bahia, Brazil.

He is also the coordinator of the international team of scientists that published the findings in the October issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Without scientific evidence, we might put at risk our biodiversity, which is a unique and indispensable heritage.”

“The Amazonian region has an extraordinary richness of plants, and the number of tree species found reflects that we currently know only a part of the biodiversity hosted by the largest tropical humid jungle of the world”, added Cardoso.

The inventory of plant species was carried out by scientists from the eight countries covered by the Amazon rainforest, along with colleagues from the United States and Europe.

They verified that a total of 14,003 species of seed plant (any plant that bears seeds) exist in the Amazon forest stretching from Brazil to Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, the Guianas, and Suriname. Legumes are the most numerous, numbering almost 1,380 species.

After carefully checking existing databases of Amazonian plant species located in regions up to an altitude of 1,000 meters, they determined that a number of species were included in three earlier studies (2016, 2016 and 2009) in error. For one study, this amounted to 3,794 species or 40 per cent of the total number of species recorded.

These mistakes ranged from including the same tree plant with different names, or classifying as Amazonian native plants from other Brazilian regions or other parts of the world, to classifying bushes or plants as trees.

“Two tree species from the Myrtaceae family were quoted mistakenly over 200 times,” said Cardoso, whose specialty is taxonomy and molecular phylogeny of plants — the cataloguing, classification and understanding of the evolutionary history of plant species.

This specialization allowed him to spot some of the errors: on reviewing a list published in 2016, he found that at least 400 names of species that only thrive in the Brazilian dry-forest region of Caatinga had been labeled incorrectly as Amazonian.

Then, working together with Tiina Särkinen from the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh in Scotland, and Luciano Paganucci de Queiroz from the Federal University of Feira de Santana in Brazil, he convened 44 scientists to carry out a review of previous lists that uncovered other mistaken entries.

To produce the new catalogue, they used taxonomic information that has been updated and verified by hundreds of specialists from all over the world, such as the data available on Flora de Brasil 2020.

This method differs from the one followed in the previous studies. One of these, for example, collected information from over 200 museums, universities, herbaria and botanical gardens that was then entered in two databases: the Global Biodiversity Information Facility and SpeciesLink. However, the entries had not gone through a process of taxonomy validation.

According Cardoso and Särkinen, Flora de Brasil is a digital platform that gathers data from hundreds of years of field work in the Amazon region, with input from countless taxonomists.

They are convinced that taxonomically validated catalogues are a solid basis for understanding the development and ecology of Amazon forests in the face of climate change and other environment changes.

“Knowing the precise number of Amazonian native trees is very important to guide the formulation of conservation initiatives,” said Cardoso. “Without scientific evidence, we might put at risk our biodiversity, which is a unique and indispensable heritage.”

According to researchers, large numbers of inventories are still needed in the Amazon. “There are immense gaps of data collection. Some areas where we never have collected even a plant are bigger than some Brazilian states,” said Tiina Särkinen. “Certainly, there are many new species waiting to be known by science.”

This piece was originally published by SciDev.Net’s.

They have built state-of-the-art highways in Colombia, power plants in the Dominican Republic, canals and aqueducts in Ecuador, the metro in Panama City, and hydroelectric plants in Peru.

The company’s presence is not limited to Latin America. Odebrecht has been awarded high-profile development projects in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East.

However, few imagined that behind this successful business empire laid hidden an entrenched corruption scheme that spread systematically throughout the region with more force than the Zika virus that has plagued Brazil in recent years.

Under the leadership of the founder’s grandson, Marcelo Odebrecht, one of the largest international corruption scandals was uncovered upon discovering that Odebrecht used deceitful practices to obtain lucrative public works projects in the countries it operated.

A three-year investigation, known as Operation Car Wash began with an inquiry into illegal payments made to executives at Petrobras, and ended up tarnishing the popularity of Brazil’s then-President Dilma Rousseff, implicating congressmen involved in President Rousseff’s controversial impeachment, tainting beloved politician and former President Lula da Silva, in addition to unraveling a dirty secret behind Odebrecht’s success.

This investigation received its name because of a nefarious network of car service stations discovered at the beginning of the probe that were used to divert illegal payments.

On December 21, 2016, the US Department of Justice published an investigation into Odebrecht, where the company was accused of paying bribes to public officials from 12 countries in order to win development contracts.

Bloomberg reported that the US Deputy Assistant Attorney General Sung-Hee Suh said, “This was a hidden but fully functioning Odebrecht business unit – a department of bribery so to speak – that systematically paid hundreds of millions of dollars to corrupt government officials in countries on three continents.”

As a result of these serious accusations, the company agreed to pay a US$ 3.5 billion fine, the largest bribery fine in history, after being linked to paying US$ 439 million to public officials from Angola, Argentina, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mozambique, Panama, Peru, and Venezuela.

In the beginning of 2016, the Brazilian judge behind Operation Car Wash, Sergio Moro, had filed various court orders against Odebrecht executives for corruption charges. Judge Moro left the Brazilian government with no alternative other than reform and reconciliation. As a result of his work, Fortune magazine named Judge Moro among the World’s 50 Greatest Leaders in 2016.

Brazil has taken great strides in establishing a higher degree of transparency and accountability by embarking upon Operation Car Wash, considered the largest anti-corruption investigation in the history of the Americas.

The corruption scandal uncovered political linkages, and in April 2014, the Car Wash operation consisted of 36 people summoned for money laundering and forming a criminal organization, while 30 people had been detained, among them the former director of Petrobras, Paulo Roberto Costa.

Nearly one year later, in March, 2015, the Minister of the Federal Supreme Court of Brazil, Teori Zavascki, reopened the Operation Car Wash investigation into 47 politicians suspected of becoming involved with Petrobras, among them various congressmen and senators.

The media attention and corruption accusations made the National Development Bank of Brazil suspend the disbursement of US$ 3.6 billion that had been approved for 16 infrastructure projects in Argentina, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Honduras, Venezuela, among other countries.

Then, in February, 2016, well-known publicist and political strategist João Santana was arrested and accused of receiving money from Petrobras. Brazilian authorities detained Santana upon his return from the Dominican Republic, where he was advising the victorious reelection campaign for Dominican President Danilo Medina.

Santana, a political marketing genius and campaign mastermind, played a key role in electing six presidents across Latin America, and one president in Africa. During these election campaigns, Santana leveraged his franchise of advisory firms, “Polis,” which he established in the countries he worked.

Additionally, João Santana had received millions of dollars from Odebrecht to finance and advise political campaigns in key markets for their business.

Moreover, Swiss authorities sent documents that indicated some transactions could have been made through a Swiss bank account that Santana and his wife had under the name of an offshoring company called Shellbill, headquartered in Panama.

The arrest of “the maker of presidents”, affected leaders from the Dominican Republic to Angola. This quid-pro-quo scheme revealed the funding of political campaigns were in exchange for awarding Odebrecht significant development contracts for infrastructure projects.

According to the Brazilian newspaper Folha de S. Paulo and Brazilian magazine Veja, Santana and his wife Monica Moura admitted that US$ 3 million of the US$ 7 million that Santana’s firms received from Odebrecht were expressly for the advisory services to presidential campaigns in Argentina, Panama, and other countries.

Similar to Brazil’s Operation Carwash, other countries in Latin America have begun investigating the extent of Odebrecht’s corruption schemes in their respective nations. The following is a country-by-country dashboard analysis of the valiant efforts made to hold those involved accountable.

Argentina

Bribes Paid: US$ 35 million Fines: 0 Charged: 0 (1 under investigation) Detained: 0

Odebrecht paid more than US$ 35 million from 2007 to 2014 to intermediaries, with the knowledge that these payments would be made, in part, to government officials in Argentina, according to Argentinean newspaper Infobae.

Argentina Prosecutor Federico Delgado decided to investigate the country’s director of the Federal Intelligence Agency, Gustavo Arribas, one of President Mauricio Macri’s closest advisors, to find out if Arribas received US$ 600,000 from Odebrecht. On February 2, 2017, Arribas claimed his innocence before a Congressional Bicameral Intelligence Commission.

Colombia

Bribes Paid: US$ 11 million Fines: 0 Charged: 2 Detained: 2

According to a report from Colombia’s Attorney General, the Vice Minister of Transport, Gabriel Garcia Morales, from the administration of former President Alvaro Uribe, has been detained accused of receiving US$ 6.5 million to guarantee that Odebrecht was selected for the construction of the major highway, Ruta del Sol, through Colombia.

During the years 2009 and 2014, Odebrecht paid US$ 11 million in bribes throughout Colombia. Former Senator Otto Bula was detained for his alleged connection to receiving a US$ 4.5 million bribe in order to secure the contract for the Ocaña-Gamarra highway.

Recently, suspicions emerged about the previous presidential candidate for the opposition party Democratic Center Oscar, Ivan Zuluaga, who is believed to have received financing from Odebrecht for his campaign in Colombia’s 2014 Presidential election.

Dominican Republic

Bribes Paid: US$ 92 million Fines: US$ 184 million Charged: 0 Detained: 0

Second only to Venezuela, Dominican Republic received the largest amount of bribes from Odebrecht at US$ 92 million. The company has been constructing major highways and the Punta Catalina thermoelectric plant whose contract was awarded on December 9, 2013 in the amount of the US$ 2.4 billion.

The Punta Catalina Project value was supposedly discounted to US$ 1.9 billion following public outcry. However, according to legal documents filed in Dominican courts for the same thermoelectric plant construction, a Chinese firm, Gezhouba Group, submitted a bid to complete the same project for less than half the cost, US$ 900 million, which is a difference of US$ 1.1 billion following the supposed discount offered by Odebrecht.

The Punta Catalina hydroelectric power project will be built to utilize coal power, failing to take into account that the Dominican Republic is a fragile island vulnerable to the adverse affects of climate change, accelerated by dirty power sources.

Despite this large amount of bribes paid in the Dominican Republic, the country has carried out just a few interrogations that have not led to any formal charges or detentions. In fact, legal action has been limited to accusations against businessman Angel Rondon as the individual responsible for receiving US$ 92 million in bribes.

Before the Odebrecht case, little was known about this businessman, but due to this high-profile scandal, photos and videos have emerged indicating a close relationship between Rondon and Dominican President Danilo Medina, in addition to other politicians and the Dominican press.

Among the images, there is one where the Attorney General of the Dominican Republic Jean Alain Rodriguez is standing directly behind Rondon during an inauguration ceremony.

Furthermore, on October 27, 2013, President Medina presented Rondon with the Dominican Republic’s national merit award for breeding livestock.

Since the announcement that Odebrecht will pay the Dominican Republic a US$ 184 million fine, little has been reported about the case. On January 22, 2017, Dominican citizens took to the streets with the largest public march against corruption in the country’s history.

Panama

Bribes Paid: US$ 59 million Fines: US$ 59 million (initial guarantee) Charged: 17 Detained: 0

Odebrecht has a long track record of completed and active development projects in Panama totaling more than US$ 3 billion, such as the Panama City Metro, Pan-American Highway, coastal beltway, transmission lines, hydroelectric power plant, and irrigation systems.

Panama’s Attorney General Kenia Porcell decided to tackle the Odebrecht corruption scandal and has charged 17 people, among them three former government officials, eight local businessmen, five foreigners, and an executive from a local bank, after Switzerland terminated the confidentiality of these clients.

Switzerland revealed to Panamanian authorities the US$ 22 million deposited in bank accounts of the sons of former Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli.

As a result of these investigations, on January 28, 2017, Panama notified Odebrecht they would be terminating the company’s ongoing work on the hydroelectric power plant Chan II.

Additionally, Panama’s current President, Juan Carlos Varela, agreed to an investigation into his own administration as well as that of his two predecessors, Martin Torrijos (2004-2009) and Ricardo Martinelli (2009-2014).

Peru

Bribes: US$ 29 million Fines: $262 million Charged: 4 Detained: 4

In Peru, Odebrecht has built large infrastructure projects including a hydroelectric power plant and hydraulic transfer system linked to US$ 29 million in bribes.

This information was revealed in the US Department of Justice report covering the management of presidents Alejandro Toledo (2001-2006), Alan García (2006-2011) and Ollanta Humala (2011-2016).

A former Ministry of Transport & Communications official during the government of Alan Garcia has been detained, in addition to the former government official Edwin Luyo.

In addition, the former vice minister of Communications, Jorge Cuba, who until recently was a fugitive with an international warrant for his arrest, was also detained.

According to the news agency Andina, Odebrecht paid US$ 7 million to Luyo and Cuba to gain an unfair advantage on contract bids. Odebrecht has just paid US$ 262 million as a fine for not completing its construction contract of the gas pipeline Gasoducto del Sur that the company was retained to build in Peru.

On February 3, 2017, several developments turned the case around: Jorge Cuba’s wife, a former professional volleyball player, returned from Miami and was charged with owning 35 percent of the offshore business Oblong International, created in Andorra to receive money from Odebrecht.

On the same day, Panama’s Attorney General Kenia Porcell visited Lima to meet with her counterpart about the Odebrecht case. Moreover, according to the Peruvian newspaper La República, former President Alejandro Toledo had received US$ 20 million for awarding major highway engineering and construction contracts.

It is thought that this money was deposited in the bank account of Toledo’s friend Josef Maiman. On Feb. 4, 2017, Peruvian prosecutors raided the house of former president Alejandro Toledo, and with each passing day, the Odebrecht case threatens to imprison all Peruvian former presidents.

Just What the Doctor Ordered

Finally, according to Switzerland’s Public Ministry, for each million of dollars that Odebrecht paid in bribes, the company generated US$ 4 million in profit.

Given the lucrative nature of this level of corruption and the entanglements of virtually all levels of government and the private sector, the only elixir to cure this regional disease is stronger democratic institutions throughout Latin America.

The widespread investigations and fines challenging a culture of impunity and its profitability are just what the doctor ordered to guarantee a greater degree of transparency that can vaccinate the region from the destabilizing effects of endemic corruption.

Geovanny Vicente Romero is the founder of the Dominican Republic Center of Public Policy, Leadership and Development (CPDL-RD). He is a political analyst and lecturer based in Washington, D.C. Reach him on Twitter @geovannyvicentr

Overdue payments on a US$ 246.9 million loan were made on Thursday, January 8, added the statement, so "the Brazilian ambassador will be returning to Quito next week." According to Ecuadorian sources the dispute was over an "estimated US$ 80 million."

However the carefully worded statement also warned that Brazil "will continue to closely monitor the evolution of its economic and financial relations with Ecuador."

Ambassador Antonino Marques Porto was called to Brasí­lia in late November after Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa said his country would not pay the loan to Brazil's National Development Bank because of allegations of poor quality work in the controversial hydroelectric project.

But Ecuador last month also expelled executives of Rio de Janeiro-based construction company Norberto Odebrecht SA because of allegedly faulty work on the San Francisco hydroelectric plant, considered key for Ecuador's future energy needs.

The dispute prompted heated exchanges between the two nations, and Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim angered Ecuador when he said last month that the nation had "shot itself in the foot."

In testimony before Congress in December, Amorim said Ecuador could suffer severe consequences for suspending loan payments, stating that Brazil is among the few sources of loans left for Ecuador because of the global credit crunch.

Ecuador is projecting a US$ 1.5 billion deficit in 2009 because of low oil prices and has defaulted recently on some of its general foreign debt.

Officials have suggested that the dispute could put other joint projects at risk, including a land-and-river trade route that Correa wants to establish to link Brazil's Amazon rain forest to Ecuador's Pacific coast.

Such infrastructure projects integrating Brazil with neighboring nations usually receive heavy funding from Brazil, Latin America's largest economy with much deeper state financing resources than most of the continent's other nations.

Mercopress

Ecuador filed an international lawsuit on Thursday, November 20, to suspend payments on the loan from Brazil's BNDES (National Bank for Economic and Social Development), alleging the terms are unlawful.

Correa, said on Saturday, November 22, that the diplomatic tension between his country and Brazil, started in Brasí­lia, and not in Quito. "If they want to convert a commercial-financial problem into a diplomatic incident, this is the exclusive responsibility of Brazil," said the Ecuadorian president.

Correa said that his country likes Brazil a lot and that there is no reason for a fight. He also claimed that Ecuador did not call off the payment, but simply appealed judicially against the debt. "We didn't refuse to pay, nor did we throw the contract in the trash can," he concluded.

Lula expressed his "profound displeasure" with his Ecuadorian colleague for taking the loan debt to an international arbitration.

Rafael Correa, the Ecuadorian president, has warned the country may not repay "illegitimate" debt, as oil export revenues have been hurt by falling prices and the global financial crisis.

Correa said the results of a year long audit of Ecuador's debt found indications that much of the country's US$ 10 billion foreign debt could be illegitimate.

Celso Amorim, the Brazilian foreign minister, has previously warned that if Ecuador defaults on a loan from the BNDES it would end bilateral trade between the two nations.

"Whoever knows diplomatic practices knows exactly what this [recall] means," Amorim said in São Paulo on Friday, November 21.

"We have wide co-operation with Ecuador and we will examine this co-operation in light of these decisions."

Wall Street credit rating agencies have said Ecuador is among the least credit worthy countries in Latin America.

The country defaulted on US$ 5.8 billion in bonds in 1999, also amid a sharp fall in oil prices.

Mercopress/Bzz 

Correa took office last January 15 and according to the latest opinion poll in Ecuador has a 76% support, ahead of all other American leaders.

The second most popular leader, by a slight margin, is Colombia's Alvaro Uribe with a 75% support last April in spite of being five years in office.

Mexican president Felipe Calderón who took office last December follows with 65% approval, the same as Venezuela's Hugo Chavez who has been in office for eight years. President Evo Morales from Bolivia has 64% support.

At the other end figure Guatemala's Berger with 20% approval; Panama's Martin Torrijos, 24%; United States George Bush, bashed by the Iraq war with 36% and Dominican Republic Leonel Fernandez, 38%.

The middle ground is occupied by Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega, 61%; Uruguay's Tabare Vazquez, 60%; Argentina's Nestor Kirchner 57%; Honduras Manuel Zelaya, 57%; Antonio Saca from El Salvador, 56%; Costa Rica's Oscar Arias, 55%; Paraguay's Nicanor Duarte, 54% and Chile's Michelle Bachelet, 51%.

Below 50% are, Brazil's Lula da Silva with 49%; Peru's Alan Garcia, 49% and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, 45%.

Mercopress

According to Correa, the institution would function as a Regional Monetary Fund, so Latin American countries would no longer need to request financial aid from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), from the World Bank, and from governments of wealthy countries.

"Latin America has approximately US$ 200 billion in reserves invested abroad, mostly in the developed world. In other words, a poor region like Latin America is now financing the developed world, this is absurd," said Correa.

"If combined, these reserves can be a fund, which we called the Southern Bank, to finance governments in the region itself, so Latin America would not require external extraordinary financing," he said.

The presidential advisor for internal affairs, Marco Aurélio Garcia, confirmed that the Brazilian government considers as "good," with reservations, the idea of a financial institution for the region.

"So far, the projects that appeared for a Southern Bank had no technical consistency," he claimed.

According to him, Correa will propose a meeting for ministers of Finance, so the project can gain "technical consistency."

"Brazil defends the creation of a South American financial system, which also involves other issues, such as the agreement we reached with a Argentina for doing trade using domestic currency," Garcia claimed.

President Lula is interested in the project, according to Correa. "Lula showed interested in the idea. What he told me is that the concepts are a little bit confused," he said.

According to the president of Ecuador, a first draft of the Southern Bank, made by ministers of Economy from Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina and Venezuela, forecasted a development bank.

"Such an institution already exists, it is the CAF [Andean Development Corporation]. The idea is to establish a Regional Monetary Fund, aimed at financing countries, and which should be a preamble to a future Central Bank, to be created when the entire region has an unified currency," said Correa, to whom Latin America must seek a regional currency.

The idea of a Southern Bank was launched in February by the governments of Argentina and Venezuela. Further on, Ecuador and Bolivia joined. Brazil and Paraguay participate as observers.

ABr

The ex-President of Ecuador, Lúcio Gutiérrez, gave up the political asylum granted by Brazil in April, according to an official note of the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Relations.

By making this decision, communicated to the Ministry of Justice on Monday, June 6, Gutiérrez may stay in Brazil as a tourist with free transit, but will lose the special security scheme maintained while he was a political refugee. His wife and daughter had already given up the asylum in May.

According to the note, it is a personal decision, on what the Brazilian government doesn’t have the right to opine.

The former president’s family left Ecuador on April 24th, three days after Lúcio Gutiérrez’ removal from presidency.

Before embarking to Brazil, the ex-president of Ecuador stayed at the Brazilian Embassy, in Quito, until he was able to leave the place in a mission directed by the Brazilian Air Force.

The Embassy was surrounded by protesters that opposed to Gutiérrez fleeing the country.

Gutiérrez’ older daughter, Carina Ximena, is an Army cadet, and opted to stay in Ecuador. Lucio Gutiérrez decided to request asylum to Brazil after several popular protests against his government, and the voting session at the Ecuador’s National Congress that resulted in his removal.

Agência Brasil

The Ecuadoran Minister of Economy, Rafael Correa, suggested a cooperation agreement in which Brazil gains the right to navigate through the port of Manta in exchange for permitting Ecuador to use the port of Manaus, in the state of Amazonas. Both countries would thus have access to the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

The port of Manta is considered an important commercial center and seaside resort, besides being Ecuador’s second largest port, after Guayaquil.

Since 1999 it has been used by American forces as a strategic location in the war on narcotraffic.

The Ecuadoran Minister also presented two loan requests to the National Economic and Social Development Bank (BNDES): US$ 60 million for the purchase of airplanes and US$ 190 million for the construction of a hydroelectric plant in Ecuadoran territory.

Correa made his remarks after a meeting with the Brazilian Minister of Development, Industry, and Foreign Trade, Luiz Fernando Furlan. He said that Furlan’s reaction was favorable to the proposal.

“I believe that the funding will be concretized shortly,” he concluded.

Agência Brasil

Brazil’s Minister of Foreign Relations, Celso Amorim, arrives today at Quito (Ecuador) to integrate the South American Community of Nations. The Community will observe the unfolding political crisis in Ecuador, which led to the removal of the country’s president Lucio Gutiérrez.

The Chancellors of Peru, Manuel Rodrí­guez Cuadros, and of Bolivia, Juan Ignacio Siles del Valle, also integrate the delegation.

Before leaving to the Ecuadorean capital, Amorim will participate on the last day of the Third Ministerial Conference of the Community of Democracies, in Santiago, Chile. The meeting started yesterday.

The Community of Democracies was created in 2000 with the objective of promoting democratic principles in the world. It was a joint initiative of the United States, Chile, India, South Korea, Mali, Poland, and the Czech Republic.

Gutiérrez Visa

Ecuador’s ex-president, Lucio Gutiérrez, signed a request for a Brazilian territorial visa Thursday, April 28. The document was analyzed and the visa has already been granted.

Gutiérrez was received by the Executive Secretary of the Ministry of Justice, Luiz Paulo Barreto, at the Ministry.

The ex-president and his family arrived in Brazil on the 24th. The political asylum request was made when Gutiérrez was still in Quito, capital of Ecuador.

Gutiérrez is the third political refugee received by Brazilian government. Before him, came the ex-president of Paraguay, General Alfredo Stroessner, and the ex-chief of Haiti’s Secret Police, Colonel Albert Pierre.

Gutiérrez and family are at an Army’s transit hotel.

Agência Brasil