It was 2007, and QQ Construções, an excellent and traditional Brazilian construction company, aimed to win a contract for urban rehabilitation in Benghazi, Libya, involving road infrastructure, sanitation, electricity distribution, and various urban equipment (parks, sports courts, health posts, police stations, etc.), somewhat similar to what the Inter-American Development Bank financed in the Baixada Fluminense with the names "Baixada Viva" and "Nova Baixada." Benghazi, on the Mediterranean coast, is the second-largest city in Libya, with about 1 million urban inhabitants.
To achieve this, they gathered their permanent staff along with a group of non-permanent professionals, who were well-known and friends of QQ, and who were experts in their fields. They all went to Libya not only to impress the client but also to get to know the area, make a good proposal, and evaluate the costs involved, as some tasks were not part of QQ’s daily routine.
To provide some context, there were about eight Brazilian engineers, including Teles and Bezerra, who were not from QQ but were experienced in creating the “designs” the project would follow. Among the other six was Siena, an engineer from QQ. The group gathered in Recife, from where they took an Alitalia flight to Rome, and after a 24-hour layover, another flight to Tripoli. It was early December 2007. At the time, the Brazilian government (second term of President Lula) had good relations with the folkloric Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, who was the Head of State of Libya (from 1961 to 2011). Brazil also had an interesting program to support the export of services from Brazilian engineering companies through BNDES.
With Gaddafi calling the shots in Libya and his anti-Western stance, traveling to Libya (and back) was a problem. For more than 10 years after this trip to Libya, whenever the participants needed to obtain a U.S. visa or enter NATO countries, which happened many times, customs officials always stopped them to ask what they had been doing in Libya in 2007! I think they never contradicted themselves, as they were never stopped. The political climate in Libya and towards Libya was tense. Gaddafi was accused of oppressing his people and allegedly supporting or aiding in some famous terrorist acts around the world, most notably the 1988 PanAm plane bombing over England and the 1972 Olympic Games bombing in Germany, among others.
He was considered folkloric because, among other things, while the group was in Libya, Gaddafi was camping in a tent he set up in a garden in Lisbon where a UN meeting was held. He also had at his disposal a "Praetorian guard" composed of beautiful women, and his loose tongue delighted those who disliked the U.S. and other so-called "colonialist" countries.
For the two who were not employees of QQ (there were two others in this condition), when they were invited to join the group, they were promised the contracts for the projects, each in their specialty. Therefore, although they had no expenses, they didn’t earn anything. Everything was in line with market customs.
During one week, they held meetings, toured the streets, took photos, filmed, checked out the surroundings of the city, visited main suppliers of pipes, sand, cement, iron, assessed prices, taxes, and legal and accounting fees, and interviewed a handful of locals to see what the natives were like. In short, a job well done. Once the proposal's supporting documents were prepared, the group returned to Brazil, each to their own city. There was some communication among the involved parties, followed by a long silence. Each one went about their business, life went on, and no one said anything. Teles and Bezerra thought: the job was not contracted...
Then, one day, QQ called Teles for another job, this time in Venezuela. In the meeting room, on the table, there was a beautiful "QQ Magazine," an internal publication for clients, and surprise, what was on the cover of the magazine? The construction site in Benghazi.
Teles didn’t comment on it, as it was a different team at QQ, but he left the room and called Bezerra, who also didn’t know, but was very upset. The QQ team could hire whoever they wanted, but they would need to reimburse at least the hours and work spent on putting together that proposal, along with a "margin" for the "break of agreement." It was customary. At the very least, they should have thanked them and explained why they couldn't fulfill the agreement!
To summarize, large Brazilian construction companies had started adopting a management system where each project was essentially another company, a separate cost center, where most of the compensation for the "coordinating" team came from the margin they could "extract" from the contract. When the contract manager was dishonest, that’s what happened. The person only cared about that contract, that moment; the rest didn’t matter, not even ethics.
In this case, they chose to default on their commitment and behave unscrupulously towards Teles and Bezerra, perhaps to save a few bucks from which the contract management would take a 15% share, or to favor some friend. The loss was left with those who invested their time, thinking, "We don’t know them," the contract managers in Libya thought.
Fortunately, most people are honest, and life goes on. In fact, other QQ colleagues, aware of the episode, still try to compensate Teles and Bezerra, some simply because they are good people and don’t agree with those attitudes, others out of fear of Teles and Bezerra, who gained a reputation for being “good at cursing.”
This all happened because Bezerra, who besides being an engineer is a folk healer from the interior of Goiás, spread the word that Cleiton, the manager of the Libya contract, the biggest scoundrel, would regret his actions. Bezerra would show anyone who wanted to see a little jar of powder that he claimed was from a Peruvian mummy, where he had worked for another Brazilian construction company and had become friends with an Incan curse shaman. This potion, he claimed, gave irreversible supernatural powers so strong that it brought such bad luck to the “victim” that the person wouldn’t even die but would suffer for longer. Why die? He said he had already sent the powder to Cleiton.
As it happened, QQ got the job, started the work in 2009, and Gaddafi was deposed in 2011, when the contract was at the peak of activity (the top of the Gaussian curve). He was deposed and murdered during a civil war in Libya. The QQ team, around 30 people, including Siena, had to be rescued one night in front of a beach near Benghazi, swimming in neoprene suits, by a special boat from Italy, operated by mercenary soldiers, likely provided by QQ. Coincidence or not, the winds changed shortly after Teles told Bezerra about the scam they had pulled on them.
It was reported to Teles that, just like Bezerra, they sadistically found it great: "What happens to others is a joy," especially when others don’t fulfill their agreements.
Teles and Bezerra didn’t have anyone there nor were they present, fortunately. They were relieved. Siena never spoke to the “betrayed” ones again nor responded to WhatsApp messages or emails, probably embarrassed for having stayed on the project and followed orders to hide the start of the work.
It is said that Cleiton never recovered from the trauma of the night of the escape, and his tool, which was already of poor quality, stopped working altogether, despite repeated doses of testosterone. It seems that someone even went to beg Bezerra for mercy and an antidote for the Peruvian powder, but Bezerra says he has nothing to do with that part. He did consult the Pachacayo shaman out of charity but learned that Cleiton had already been impotent before the contract began. Retroactive contract amendments would have to be made. No one was interested in that.
Miguel Fernández y Fernández,
Consulting engineer, chronicler and columnist, Apr2023 (7,250 caracters)
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