The electoral programs of federal deputy Captain Wagner, candidate for the government of Ceará by União Brasil, had a figure unknown to Brazilians as the main highlight: former FBI agent George Piro.” If you choose Wagner as your governor, on January 1, 2023, I’ll be there with him to change Ceará”, guarantees the American in English, accompanied by a dramatic dubbing, typical of action films broadcast by Sessão da Tarde on TV Globo.
Piro became, at the same time, an illustrious electoral corporal and a poster boy for Captain Wagner, who promises to “install in Ceará the largest intelligence office against crime in the country” and an “FBI standard” public security. That would be possible, assured the candidate, because he has “an established partnership, a commitment from the FBI, the US federal police to help us”. To convince voters, it is worth even a bizarre montage on video, with parody making a pun on the ex-agent’s last name.
But the candidacy that represents the Bolsonarista wing in Ceará – technically tied for first place with PT Elmano de Freitas, according to the latest IPEC survey – hides some truths about Piro and this “partnership”. Since July, he hasn’t even worked for the FBI, a fact that the campaign doesn’t make clear to voters. Worse, there is no commitment from the American agency to Captain Wagner.
According to the Florida Bulldog website, George Piro retired after being called to FBI headquarters in Washington to explain why he had not investigated Sheriff Gregory Tony, accused of corruption in bids for first-aid kits. He worked in Broward County, Florida, and Piro had been leading the FBI office in Miami, the state capital, since 2018. It was therefore his responsibility to investigate the case, but he transferred him to the FBI office in South Carolina. .
Also according to the website, Piro would have refused to carry out the investigation, because he did not want to be responsible for the arrest of the first black sheriff in the region, nor ruin his relationship with Tony’s office, with whom he worked frequently. The undue interference, says another report by Florida Bulldog, brought the investigation to a halt. Unhappy with the boss’s attitude, a subordinate reportedly complained, but the case only returned to the FBI’s Miami office after Piro’s retirement.
The FBI declined to answer whether the removal has anything to do with the allegations of interference in Sheriff Tony’s case. Piro also did not return my interview request. At least publicly, the agency is only praising the “highly decorated” agent. In a text posted on the website to announce his retirement, the FBI highlighted the “numerous awards” received by the “intelligence and law enforcement service”.
Piro, on the other hand, said that he intended to retire many years ago, but ended up postponing the decision because of the pandemic and the death, in a police operation, of two agents who worked with him. “I chose to remain to guide the office through a difficult time,” he said.
Contrary to what Captain Wagner says in one of his election programs, Piro was not “director of the agency for 23 years” – he worked for the FBI for 24 years, but did not hold a directing position during that entire period. According to the Florida Bulldog, Piro served for a time as assistant director of the Division of International Operations at FBI Headquarters.
But for the past four years, according to the agency, Piro has held the position of “special agent in charge of the FBI’s Miami field office”, a role he had previously held between 2014 and 2017. This is one of four offices with responsibility extraterritorial territory, so Piro’s team could have missions in Latin America.
It is because of this curriculum that Captain Wagner trusts Piro to solve the problems of public safety in his government. But there are many weaknesses in the proposal to “bring to Ceará the FBI investigation standard”. The main one is pragmatic: the US federal police is nothing like the Civil Police of any Brazilian state, especially with regard to the investments they receive and the attributions they have. The FBI is closer to the Brazilian Federal Police.
The federal deputy and candidate for the government of Ceará Captain Wagner, who should contest the second round with PT Elmano de Freitas.
Photo: Pablo Valadares/Chamber of Deputies
Therefore, in order to import the “best weapons and cutting-edge training”, Captain Wagner, if elected governor, would need to articulate an unprecedented partnership between the State Department of Public Security, the federal government of Brazil and the United States, the Federal Police and the FBI.
In speeches and interviews, the candidate tries to convince voters that Piro will act as an intermediary for such multilateral cooperation. “Of course, it will facilitate the establishment of this partnership. The trust he has in the US government, in the FBI itself, will enable the exchange of information”, promised the candidate.
There is, however, no indication that this will work in practice, especially since Piro is now just a retired ex-agent. At most, he will be able to offer the services of his private company, Piro Global Services, which provides security consultancy.
In addition to the company, he is now dedicated to martial arts training and participating in the Jiu-Jitsu Dummies podcast. He also serves as a “motivational speaker,” according to his LinkedIn profile. For the future, he plans to write a book about his life at the FBI.
The experience in Amazonas proved that paying millions for a foreign consultancy is ineffective.
The person responsible for introducing Captain Wagner to his poster boy was former UFC MMA fighter Wilson Gouveia, a native of Ceará who lives in the United States and teaches Brazilian jiu-jitsu. It is he who trains Piro at American Top Team, one of the country’s elite mixed martial arts academies.
In the video in which Captain Wagner brags about visiting the FBI’s Miami office and meeting Piro personally, there are many images of this academy and jiu-jitsu coaches. Next to the candidate on the tour is always Gouveia, not the ex-FBI agent.
At the end of August, the coalition of the PT candidate for the government of Ceará, Elmano Freitas, filed a representation in the Electoral Court accusing Captain Wagner’s campaign of spreading “disinformation and fake news” by promising to implement the “FBI standard” in security. state public.
“George Piro’s Promise to Hire […] would lead to the provision of its consulting services in the area of public security, and not the idea of implementing the FBI’s own techniques in Ceará”, states an excerpt from the lawsuit.
I got in touch with coach Wilson Gouveia, but he told me: “After some reflection I decided not to give this interview”. Captain Wagner also declined to answer any of my questions.
From Rudy Giuliani to George Piro
The electoral strategy of resorting to an American to solve the public security problems of a Brazilian state was already used in 2018 by Amazonino Mendes, when he was governor of Amazonas and ran for reelection. He paid more than R$ 5 million for the consultancy of Donald Trump’s lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani, known as Rudy Giuliani, and started using him as a poster boy in his campaign.
Giuliani rose to prominence as an anti-mafia prosecutor in the 1980s, rose to national celebrity as New York’s hardline crime mayor in the 1990s, and rose to international prominence in the same role after the 9/11, 2001 attacks. , opened a private consulting company and made a lot of money providing services to several cities in Latin America.
His most successful case would have been that of Medellín, Colombia. Giuliani claims that his consultancy was instrumental in reducing local crime rates, but some scholars dispute this information. Juan Galvis, a geographer specializing in urban issues in Latin America, said homicide statistics had been declining in most major Colombian cities for about 20 years and that no study had identified a root cause. Policies that range from investing in education to reforming the police to make them more humane and less corrupt could be some of the explanations.
Like Giuliani, Piro wants to do business in Brazil. Immediately after retiring, he updated LinkedIn with the new role of CEO of Piro Global Services. The company was opened by him when he was already head of the FBI’s Miami office, in 2020, but the proposal of the venture did not appear in the document. According to the registration data, the corporation could engage in “any and all legal business”. Taking advantage of the label of a former FBI agent, Piro went on to use the company to sell “consulting services based on more than 30 years of extensive experience in leadership and law enforcement, including during major crises and high-profile events.”
Former FBI agent George Piro guarantees that he will help Captain Wagner change public safety in Ceará if the deputy is elected.
Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty ImagesGetty Images
The experience in Amazonas has already proved that paying millions in public money for a foreign consultancy is ineffective. Four years after signing Rudy Giuliani, the state continues to see crime rates soar. Between 2021 and 2022, the number of violent deaths increased by 53.8%, according to the Brazilian Public Security Yearbook. The criminal faction Comando Vermelho is consolidated, after the weakening of the local faction Família do Norte.
In Ceará, although the number of murders between 2018 and 2021 has reduced by almost 30%, according to the special edition of the Brazilian Public Security Yearbook released this year, the state has the fourth highest fatality rate. Another major challenge to be faced by the next governor is the dominance of criminal factions, which even recruit children into their armies, especially in Fortaleza – the Red Command rivals the Primeira Comando da Capital, an ally of the local faction Guardians of the State.
These are serious problems, which are related to the lack of social, defense and assistance policies for young people, especially in the periphery. Problems that cannot be solved with foreign consultancies or motivational speeches – even less with the use of the FBI name for electoral marketing.
