Paulo Francis - Final Disputes and Death

Final Disputes and Death

His style – "a permanent diarrhea of insults, an opera-like performance of a bomber in the service of a single cause- his own" eventually caused lasting grudges. Francis was sued repeatedly in Brazilian courts for libel, to no avail. In early 1996, he was attacked bitterly by the anthropologist and then senator Darcy Ribeiro, who, reacting to Francis' disparaging comments on a bill he had presented on the restructuring of Brazil's education system, called him a neogringo and charged him with lobbying for private universities' interests: "Francis is no innocent, his news is neither information nor opinion, but a task on behalf of interest groups". Late this year, an entire book was published listing and describing various cases of his supposed plagiarisms and abuses.

The last controversial act in which Paulo Francis was involved was an early 1997 attack, on cable TV, on the management of Brazilian state-owned oil corporation Petrobras as dishonest. Francis also claimed that its directors had US$50 million stashed in a Swiss bank account. After Francis’ statements, Petrobras’ management sued him for libel in an American court, which was possible because the show was broadcast in the US to Brazilian cable TV subscribers. Soon after, he suffered a fatal heart attack and died in New York on February 4, 1997. He was buried in Rio de Janeiro, and is survived by his wife, fellow journalist Sonia Nolasco.

According to his personal friend, political columnist Élio Gaspari, Francis had approached then-senator José Serra, who supposedly asked President Fernando Henrique Cardoso to see that the directors of Petrobras drop the lawsuit against Francis—to no avail, President Cardoso chose to say nothing.