Federal Council of Medicine reactivates professional registration of former Secretary of Health accused of corruption | Rio de Janeiro

Rio – The medical record of former state secretary of Health Edmar José Alves dos Santos was reactivated, this Thursday (18), after the Federal Council of Medicine (CFM) acquitted him of charges that led to his impeachment. The anesthetist is accused of administrative improbity in a process that investigates fraud when purchasing equipment during the covid-19 pandemic.

The maximum penalty against Edmar had been applied in June last year, when the second chamber of trials for the Regional Council of Medicine of Rio de Janeiro (Cremerj) decided to revoke the registration.

However, the Federal Council decided by a majority of 22 votes to one to acquit the anesthetist. The jurors accepted Edmar’s defense thesis that pointed out the weaknesses of the evidence used to convict him.

Defendant for misconduct

In 2021, Edmar Santos, then first Secretary of Health under former governor Wilson Witzel, became a defendant for administrative improbity in a process investigating possible fraud in the purchase of a thousand respirators to treat patients with Covid-19.

Since then, he has been free due to a plea agreement he made to collaborate with the investigations. The former secretary’s testimony was one of the main pieces of evidence that culminated in Witzel’s impeachment.

In the same year, the anesthetist was transferred by the State University of Rio de Janeiro (Uerj), where he worked as a professor, to the State Secretariat of Military Police. At the time, the corporation needed doctors with their specialty.

Prison

Edmar Santos was arrested on July 10, 2020 accused of being part of a criminal organization that allegedly defrauded contracts for the purchase of respirators to combat the new coronavirus pandemic. The former secretary of Rio closed a plea with the Federal Public Ministry (MPF) and was released on August 6, 2020, following a decision given at the request of the Attorney General’s Office by the Superior Court of Justice (STJ).

The action was an offshoot of Operation Mercadores do Chaos, from the Public Ministry of Rio, on fraud in contracts from the State Department of Health, which had already resulted in the arrest of former deputy executive secretary Gabriell Neves, at the beginning of May 2021.

Days after Neves’ arrest, still in May, Edmar Santos was dismissed from his position as state secretary of Health.

The complaint alleged that Edmar acted consciously, “in communion of actions and designs” with Neves and others investigated in the first phase of the Mercadores do Caos operation, to divert public resources intended for the purchase of lung ventilators.