Rubens Valente is a renowned investigative journalist who published a book regarding a corruption case that involved banker Daniel Dantas, and the Brazilian government and judiciary. Three months after the book’s publication, a judge mentioned in the book sued Valente. After several appeals, the journalist was ordered to pay R$100,000 and include the condemnatory decision in future editions of his book. The case is now pending before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
Rubens Valente is a renowned investigative journalist from Paraná, Brazil. He has more than 30 years of journalism experience and has won several national and international awards for his work. In 2008, while working for the daily newspaper Folha de São Paulo, Valente was assigned to research a story about a police operation known as Satiagraha that uncovered alleged collusion between banker Daniel Dantas and the Brazilian government and judiciary that contributed to the privatization of the telecom sector. Valente’s research culminated in a book, Operação Banqueiro, which he published in 2014.
Operação Banqueiro includes references to the role of Supreme Court (Supremo Tribunal Federal, STF) Justice Gilmar Mendes in the process that resulted in Daniel Dantas evading preventative detention. In April 2014, just three months after the publication of Valente’s book, Justice Mendes sued Valente for “damage of image and honor,” claiming that the book included “distortions of factual reality” that amounted to an abuse of freedom of expression. Valente argued that he tried several times and in several different ways to contact Justice Mendes during his research for the book. On May 5, 2015, the first instance judge dismissed Justice Mendes’s claim, noting, among other things, that Operation Satiagraha received a lot of public attention; that Justice Mendes, especially as the president of the STF at the time of Operation Satiagraha, was a public figure; and that Valente, as a journalist, cannot be expected to express the alleged facts in a technical or legal manner.
Justice Mendes appealed the decision, which was then brought before a panel of high court judges that included Judge Hector Valverde Santana. Valente’s lawyer objected to Judge Santana adjudicating the case given that he had an employment relationship at Justice Mendes’s educational institution. Judge Santana denied this claim, and a special committee dismissed Valente’s objection for procedural reasons regarding the timing of his objection. On October 20, 2016, Judge Santana, and the other high court judges, proceeded to rule in favor of Judge Mendes, and ordered Valente to pay damages of R$100,000. Both Valente and Mendes appealed this decision, and both were denied. After interest and fines, Rubens had to pay a total of R$319,126.57.
On February 14, 2017, Justice Mendes filed another appeal before the Superior Tribunal de Justiça (STJ) (Superior Court of Justice) claiming that Valente’s book not only brought damages to him, but also damaged the reputation of the entire judiciary, and asking the STJ to mandate that Mendes’s original petition and the decision in his favor be included in every new edition of Operação Banqueiro. Following a series of appeals from Valente and Mendes, on February 12, 2019, the STJ ruled partially in favor of Justice Mendes, mandating that the condemnatory decision be printed in future editions of Valente’s book.
Valente appealed this decision through several mechanisms, but, on April 29, 2021, an STF judge not only confirmed the STJ decision, but added a further sanction, to have Mendes’s original application be published in future editions of Valente’s book. In June 2021, Valente filed another appeal, and, on July 2, 2021, a panel of judges, including the STF judge whose decision was in question, denied Valente’s appeal.
In December 2021, Valente, represented by Media Defence, Abraji, and Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, submitted a petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights alleging that Brazil has violated Valente’s rights to fair trial, privacy, freedom of thought and expression, property, and judicial protection.
In May 2022, the litigants filed an update to the petition. Specifically, they updated the IACHR on the fact that the publisher did not settle the debt, so Mendes requested that Valente be considered solely responsible for the payment of damages. The judge overseeing the execution of the judgment granted the request within 24 hours without hearing Valente’s counsel.
The fundamental rights of freedom of expression and of the press are going through a period of threats and uncertainty in Brazil, this trend started to intensify between 2019 and 2022. An alternative report by the Voces del Sur network, based on data collected by the Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism (Abraji), have evidenced this worrying context. In 2019, there were 130 alerts of violations registered in Brazil. In 2020, this number increased by 322% to 419 alerts, which also include the number of victims affected by various types of aggression in 12 indicators: murder, torture, forced disappearance, arbitrary detention, kidnapping, assaults and attacks, legal proceedings, restrictions on access to information, regulations contrary to international standards, stigmatizing speeches, and restrictions on the internet.
The National Federation of Journalists (FENAJ) recorded 428 cases of attacks on press freedom in 2020, an increase of 105% freedom in 2020, and the highest number ever recorded in a historical series dating back to 2011.
This scenario prompted several complaints and requests to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which held two public hearings in 2020 on violations of freedom of expression and freedom of expression and access to information in Brazil. The complaints brought to the Inter-American system draw attention to the role that state agents and their institutions have played in perpetrating these attacks. The Minister of Justice, for example, on several occasions, has ordered the opening of police investigations against journalists and media workers for exercising their right to freedom of expression, especially when they have published content critical of the current administration of the federal government.
In 2021, when the case was presented before the IACHR this scenario continued. Indications of violence against journalists and other media continue to show an upward trend in recorded cases. Abraji registered 453 alerts of violations of press freedom in the country, 23,4% more than in the last year . In 2022, this number increased another 23%, reaching 577 alerts throughout the year, according to Abraji’s report.
- Abraji, Abraji takes Rubens Valente’s case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (5 October 2022)
- RFK Human Rights, Renowned Investigative Journalist Persecuted For Exposing Corruption And Collusion In Brazil’s Judicial System (2021)
- Media Defence, Rubens Valente vs Brazil: The Risk of Reporting on Public Officials (22 May 2022)