In one murder after another, the Canal Livre crime TV show had an uncanny knack for being first on the scene, gathering graphic footage of the victim.
Too uncanny, say police who are investigating the show’s host, state legislator Wallace Souza, on suspicion of commissioning at least five of the murders to boost his ratings and prove his claim that Brazil’s Amazon region is awash in violent crime. Police have also accused Souza of drug trafficking.
“The order to execute always came from the legislator and his son, who then alerted the TV crews to get to the scene before the police,” state police intelligence chief Thomaz Vasconcelos said.
The killings of competing drug traffickers, he said, “appear to have been committed to get rid of his rivals and increase the audience of the TV show.”
Souza denied all the criminal allegations and called them absurd, insisting that he and his son were being set up by political enemies and drug dealers sick of his two decades of relentless crime coverage on TV and crusading legislative probes.
“I was the one who organized legislative inquiries into organized crime, the prison system, corruption, drug trafficking by police and pedophilia,” Souza said in an interview.
Souza’s lawyer, Francisco Balieiro, said that the only witness is a disgraced police officer hoping for leniency in nine murders he is charged with.
“There is not one piece of material proof in these accusations,” Balieiro said.
Vasconcelos said the accusations, which have made headlines in Brazil, stem from the testimony of several former employees and security guards who worked with the Souzas, allegedly as part of a gang of former police officers involved in drug trafficking.
Souza’s son Rafael has been jailed on charges of homicide, drug trafficking and illegal gun possession.
Police said Wallace Souza faces charges of drug trafficking, gang formation and weapons possession, but has not been charged with any killings.
Souza remains free because of legislative immunity that prevents him from being arrested as long as he is a lawmaker. He is being investigated by a special task force and state judicial authorities will decide whether the case goes forward.
Vasconcelos said the crimes appear to have served the Souzas in two ways: They eliminated drug-trafficking rivals and boosted ratings.
“We believe that they organized a kind of death squad to execute rivals who disputed with them the drug trafficking business,” he said.
Souza “would eliminate his rival and use the killing as a news story for his program,” he said.
Souza became a media personality after a career as a police officer that ended in disgrace, Vasconcelos said, adding that the lawmaker was fired for involvement in fuel theft and pension fraud.
Souza denied those allegations, but said he was forced to leave the force in 1987 after being wrongly accused of involvement in a college entrance exam fraud scheme that he was investigating.
He started Canal Livre two years later on a local commercial station in Manaus, the capital of Brazil’s largely lawless Amazonas state. It became extremely popular among Manaus’ 1.7 million residents before going off the air late last year as police intensified their investigation.
The show featured Souza, in a studio, railing against rampant crime in the state, punctuated with often exclusive footage of arrests, crime scenes and drug seizures.
“When I became a police officer in 1979, bandits weren’t raised in this city — no way,” he told the audience in one show.
Brazil was a dictatorship then, whose police ruthlessly targeted criminals with little concern for civil rights.
Souza denied any role in the killings on his show and explained how his reporters managed to get to crime scenes so quickly: well-placed sources and monitoring scanners for police radio dispatches. The show also posted workers at police stations and at the Manaus morgue.
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