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Flavia Froes has been defending the most powerful Brazilian drug lords in court for more than twenty years. He has free access to Rio’s favelas and is very familiar with the mechanisms of the underworld. The criminal lawyer is afraid of nothing but toads and spiders.
Flavia Froes has defended all of Rio’s major drug lords in court for the past 24 years.
It is already dark when Flavia Froes walks confidently along the narrow and uneven path of a favela in the north of Rio de Janeiro in her stiletto heels covered in shimmering velvet. Lead the heavily armed boys of the powerful drug gang Vermelho Command. “A Doutora” (“the doctor”), as the 45-year-old lawyer is called here, greets everyone with a friendly smile and a handshake. Some are in the process of portioning cocaine, while others are walking around bored. Your superiors are among Froes’ clientele. All the powerful drug lords in the city, regardless of their faction, according to their own statements, have allowed her to defend themselves in court for the past 24 years. Wherever the police dare not, they have free access. A message is enough to allow it to do so.
“Genocide against poverty”
That evening, behind the wheel of his white BMW, he announced via Whatsapp voice message to a confidant of the Vermelho Command: “I’m getting in now”. Then he rolls down the car windows, turns on the gas and turns up the steep street that leads into the sloping slum. The car is parked, but the engine is still running when a teenager with a machine gun hanging around his neck, chest naked and uncomfortable expression asks what he is looking for here. “Good evening darling. Are you alright?” He answers, unimpressed. He remains silent and serious. It was only when she told him who he was on a date that he nodded, smiled and ran away.
Froes is a professional. For years he has been investigating criminal cases in the most dangerous slums of the city. Dealing with tough guys is their everyday life. She is not afraid. The capos, she is sure, would have protected her. She remembers how a young gang member once got carried away by her boldness and threatened her with a gun. He obviously didn’t know who he was dealing with. “If you pull the trigger, you will die,” she told him, referring to her good contacts with her bosses, Froes says dryly. He got the message and withdrew. “Then it lost its function,” he says. It is a question of respect.
According to her, it becomes dangerous for her only if a surprising police operation occurs in a favela: “They shoot randomly”. This often happens when uniformed men have not received their bribe. Froes forcefully denounces police violence. He speaks of a “genocide against poverty”. The impudence of the security forces is directed against those who in their eyes have no value: the black and destitute population.
Police officers during an operation against the drug mafia in the Alemao slum in Rio de Janeiro.
The statistics speak for themselves. According to the NGO Forum Brasileiro de Seguranca Publica, three-quarters of the people who died in police operations in Brazil between 2017 and 2018 were black. In Rio last year, 4154 homicides were officially registered. This is a 20 percent decrease from the previous year. More than 40 percent of the victims are on behalf of the police, five times more than in 2018 and the highest number recorded since 1998. Froes does not trust the information. It condemns the attitude of the current government, which supports ruthless action against criminals in the favelas. But she clarifies: police repression is not new. In the past, cases were only registered less and criminal complaints were filed less often.
Overcrowded prisons
The Brazilian criminal justice system follows the same logic as the police, according to Froes. Try to solve problems with her that need to be addressed on the basis of social justice. He speaks angrily, calls Richter “aid to the cleansing of the bourgeoisie”. The prison sentence would be the first option rather than the last option provided by law.
With officially more than 770,000 prisoners, Brazil has the largest number of prisoners in the world after the United States and China. A good 60% are black, with the country’s black population accounting for around 54%. A good third of all inmates also await the verdict. Plus, prisons are overcrowded on average by around 70%, which wasn’t just something to talk about after the crown pandemic. International human rights organizations denounce all of this just like Froes. He created an NGO that campaigns for the rights of prisoners.
This Thursday evening, she goes to the favela to do outreach work for her NGO. It is a captivating phenomenon. Heavily made up, with a plunging neckline, eye-catching earrings, blonde-white hair extensions and fake nails, she meets a handful of heavily armed gang members in a dark corner of the slums overlooking the city. The boys are potential prisoners and have friends and family who are incarcerated in a cell. Froes explains the mechanisms of the criminal justice system and the rights of prisoners. You listen carefully, someone asks a question from time to time, she answers patiently.
The criminal lawyer knows prisons very well. He jokes that he spends more time in prison than in his law firm. There is a reason for this: many of his clients were or still are behind bars. Froes criticizes the conditions of detention: eternal isolation, poisoned food through which they are poisoned, no opportunities for integration. Criminals, like any other person, are equally entitled to humane treatment and legal defense, he says, referring to the constitution. It does not have a moral dilemma because it represents serious criminals in court who also have human lives on their conscience.
Hard as a rock and delicate at the same time
Froes is not afraid of contact. He describes the relationship with his customers as normal, often friendly. Especially in a society that regards criminals as incorrigible antichrists, their role is not to condemn them. This has its price: it is said that he will charge the bosses the equivalent of up to 100,000 francs per trial. This allows her to defend petty criminals from socially disadvantaged backgrounds free of charge through her NGO.
Flavia Froes educates clients on procedural matters in a favela in northern Rio.
That evening in the favela she was introduced by a young boy as “the best paid lawyer in Rio de Janeiro”. He smiles and says: “I can’t say otherwise”. Days earlier, in his luxurious apartment in the posh Leblon neighborhood, he had made it clear that he had not negotiated prices with his clients. If it’s too high for them, then they should drop it.
Her reputation as a tough negotiator does not precede her at all. Froes gets what he wants, even when it comes to court strategies. In the past, this has repeatedly led to violent disagreements with well-known customers. She never reconciled with some of them, she admits, but she still defended them in court. “Now they know it’s not worth joking with me. After all, they apologize and come back because they need me, ”he adds, referring to his high success rate in court, and smiles with satisfaction.
Froes, the uncompromising businesswoman with the diva look, is open and straightforward in normal relationships. She is nice, laughs at herself, makes jokes and treats young gangsters and drug addicts with the same friendliness and impartiality as her employees, with whom she maintains a friendly relationship. The atmosphere in the office is relaxed. You know each other very well, drink beer together.
A “drug kitchen” in Rio de Janeiro.
A member of a drug gang in Rio de Janeiro with packages of cocaine.
In his private life he is a family man, loves to cook all his life, retreats to nature and is kind in nature, says the mother of two and the young grandmother of herself. But meekness doesn’t go hand in hand with his work environment. The justice system, the police and their clientele are all extremely macho. “Being a woman in this job doesn’t help.” You have to learn to be tough to be respected.
Elephants in the zoo
Froes never intended to defend criminals. The view she had as a law student on the criminal justice system and the realities in the favelas describes it today as twisted. He defines his political attitude at the time as fascist. This changed after he did an internship in an overcrowded detention center at the age of 21. At that time, an image was etched in his memory: the elephants in the Rio Zoo, which he could see from his office window. “The animals fared much better than the poor, neglected in prison,” he recalls. They were petty criminals from poor backgrounds who had waited forever for their trial and whom she had defended in court. Their life stories changed the point of view of the young middle-class lawyer.
According to his own estimates, he freed about 900 of them in two years, which made them aware of the big fish. In 1999, at the age of 24, she defended her first heavyweight criminal, co-founder of the Vermelho Command and notorious bank robber. You won the trial and gained notoriety. Boss after boss, made up of rival criminal organizations, have sought her out and made her what she is today: the woman trusted by the most powerful drug lords in Brazil.
But not the state. In 2010, prosecutors accused her of collaborating with organized crime and issued a warrant for her arrest. He had previously publicly denounced excessive police violence in Rio’s favelas and brought a case to the International Criminal Court. Froes believes in a revenge campaign by the governor at the time, who was pissed at her. She was able to provide evidence of her innocence and the charges were dropped. According to Froes, everything was invented to silence them.
In doing so, however, they achieved the opposite. “I’ve become a demon,” she says with a loud laugh, “ten times worse than before.” No trace of intimidation. He denounces grievances the loudest, does not shy away from anyone or anything, advocates the legalization of intoxicants – including crack, as he points out. According to her, this is the only way to reduce violence. A team of five-person fighters, as she herself says, supports her in everything.
Toads and spiders
What really drives Froes is hard to say. Her daily life is hectic, she says, work releases a lot of adrenaline and is demanding. “But someone has to do it,” he adds aloud, as if trying to point out something important in court. Repeat the sentence three times. According to her, fear is the reason many avoid this job. Is there anything Flavia Froes is afraid of? Think for a moment. “Toads and spiders,” he then says.
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