Brazil: Workers Party congressman will be in charge of Binational Itaipu

Federal congressman Ênio Verri (PT-PR) was appointed as the new president of Itaipu Binacional, on Thursday 26, after a meeting with the national president of the Workers Party, Paraná federal congresswoman Gleisi Hoffmann.

Verri replaces Admiral Anatalicio Risden Junior, appointed by former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL) in January 2022.

The second name in dispute was Jorge Samek’s, who had presided over the state-owned company between 2003 and 2016, in the governments of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Dilma Rousseff, and Michel Temer.

Two other PT names were also being considered: state congressman Arilson Chiorato and former governor Roberto Requião.

Samek was Lula’s favorite, but Verri, a federal congressman in his third term, ended up getting the vacancy.

Reelected in October, with 95,000 votes, he will have to resign his seat in the House of Representatives in order to take on the position of Itaipu’s leader.

Born in the Paraná state city of Maringá, Verri entered political life in 2001, when he was appointed Maringá’s Municipal Treasury Secretary, during José Cláudio Pereira Neto’s (PT) administration.

In 2004, at the invitation of the then federal congressman Paulo Bernardo (PT), he went to Brasilia to be a technical advisor of the Mixed Budget Commission of the National Congress.

The following year, Verri became chief of staff at the Ministry of Planning, Budget, and Management.

In 2007, he was elected state deputy and, in 2015, federal congressman. He has run for mayor of his hometown twice, without success.

With information from Revista Oeste