The Superior Court recently rejected TelexFree's appeal challenging a São Paulo ruling regarding unpaid judicial fees. This marks at least the fifteenth appeal dismissal for the company in various courts.
Desertion, under Brazilian judicial procedure, occurs when a party fails to collect or underpays the required judicial fees for filing an appeal. TelexFree faced this administrative decision in São Paulo for not fully remitting fees incurred from its previous appeals there. The latest appeal sought to overturn that specific finding.
Minister Joao Otavio de Noronha stressed that complaints, according to the Superior Court of Justice's understanding, can only be made against judgments of the state appellate class, not against monocratic court decisions. The administrator for TelexFree pointed to jurisprudential disagreement on a procedural matter, which Noronha stated cannot be resolved through a complaint. Such complaints are restricted to matters of substantive law when resolving differences between state appellate case law and the Supreme Court.
This is not the first time TelexFree has seen appeals rejected due to jurisdictional issues. The desertion penalty was issued only after the company had been given an opportunity to pay the outstanding collection of fees.
In separate news, a 22-year-old TelexFree affiliate died after jumping from a fifth-floor window of a shopping mall last week. The woman had taken out a R$ 50,000 ($21,770 USD) bank loan to invest in TelexFree. She reportedly panicked when authorities shut down the scheme, realizing her expected returns were lost.
Two weeks prior, Governor Tiao Viana of Acre publicly supported TelexFree, stating he understood that no one had been injured by the scheme so far. His statement now faces increased scrutiny following the affiliate's death.