The Improbable David

When Rio's police scooped up Lowell McAfee Birrell, 52, a month ago, it seemed likely that Brazil would deport him posthaste. Indicted in Manhattan on 69 counts of grand larceny and held on suspicion of entering Brazil on a false passport, the man accused of stealing $14 million worth of stock from a pair of U.S. companies appeared certain to end up inside a U.S. courtroom, even though the U.S. and Brazil do not have an extradition treaty.

Instead, Birrell last week was still safe --though technically under custody--in Brazil, reveling in the unaccustomed role of a rich-but-heroic David pitted against the ruthless power of a Wall Street-dominated U.S.-Government Goliath. And New York Assistant District Attorney James V. Hallisey, who had gone to Rio to push Birrell back to the U.S., was back in Manhattan empty handed.

The miracle maker was Birrell's Brazilian lawyer, Jorge Chaloupe, 52. Half attorney, half pressagent, Chaloupe ("I used to be a newspaperman myself") built his career around a careful study of Brazil's immigration laws. Recently, he rescued U.S. Promoter Earl Belle from deportation by stalling long enough for Belle's wife to have a baby in Brazil; parents of Brazilian-born children are not deportable. For Birrell, Chaloupe began by starting a flock of legal actions that blocked immediate expulsion. Then, as U.S. embassy officials explained to Assistant D.A. Hallisey, Birrell received a shipment of cash, and Brazilian newsmen began receiving invitations to cocktail parties where the talk favored Birrell.

Diario de Noticias reported that the Canadian passport U.S. Citizen Birrell had used to enter Brazil was not really false; it had just been altered to leave

Birrell's last name off so that the industrialist, known as a Batista supporter, would not be assassinated when his plane landed in Fidel Castro's Cuba. To the delight of Brazilians, who regard avoiding taxes as a kind of fifth freedom, Ultima Horn reported that the only reason Birrell did not want to go home was a mere matter of income tax evasion. O Globo reported a Chaloupe statement that Birrell wanted to build a $14 million electronics plant in Brazil, and that "it can only be deduced that interests that do not want to lose these markets are causing difficulties." Another newspaper called the waiting Hallisey a mercenary hounding Birrell for a supposed $150,000 reward--a bounty that would make any Brazilian cop drool.

By last week Chaloupe had Brazilians convinced that giving up Birrell was equivalent to giving up the Southern Cross. New York District Attorney Frank Hogan exploded, blaming the U.S. embassy in Rio for dragging its feet. "All we got from the embassy was a run-around and daily lectures on Latin American relations. We were told that our policy was not to rush the Brazilians, not to raise any anti-American feelings." In a, word, Chaloupe's whitewash had made even the U.S. embassy wonder whether urging Brazil to send Birrell home was diplomatically advisable.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.