João Villaverde
João Villaverde is a journalist and reporter for O Estado de S. Paulo, one of Brazil's most influential and longest-running quality newspapers. He was born in São Paulo and started his career covering Economics and Labour Markets for Valor Econômico, a business and economics oriented newspaper early 2008. Through May 2008 to May 2011, he worked for Valor in São Paulo. He was invited then to live and work for Valor in Brasilia, the national capital. He covered the Ministry of Finance and also the debate of Economics Acts in Congress for Valor until August, 2012, when he was invited to join O Estado de S. Paulo office at Brasilia, where he is working since September, 2012.
He has a BA in Journalism from the Pontificia Universidade Catolica de São Paulo (PUC-SP). He also has academic training in Economics after attending the Latin America Program on Rethinking Development Economics (LAPORDE), offered jointly by the Fundacao Getulio Vargas (FGV) and Cambridge University in January, 2012.
Villaverde won the prize “Best News Reporting of 2014”, offered by Agencia Estado annually. The prize was for the story known as “The case of the 4 billion reais”, published throughout July and August, 2014, by Adriana Fernandes and João Villaverde at O Estado de S. Paulo. The story was focused on a strange account of a private bank that had 4 billion reais that belonged to the Brazilian government, and this account was not found by Brazilian central bank until May, 2014. This money was then used to make the national debt lower than it was before the discovery. The story led to an investigation by the “Tribunal de Contas da União - TCU” that went on to determine to the central bank to improve its system of inspection of the financial market in Brazil.
He was also finalist in the Exxon-Mobil Journalism Award in 2015, the biggest award for journalists in Brazil. He was selected in September 2015 for the coverage of the fiscal maneuvers done by president Dilma Rousseff administration in 2013 and 2014. The maneuvers were called “pedaladas fiscais” and are now backing the opposition plan to impeach Dilma because the “pedaladas” broke the law. See the news release here. He also won the "Best News Reporting" award in December, 2015, offered by O Estado de S. Paulo annually. With that, he won the "Best News Reporting" of Agencia Estado/O Estado de S. Paulo for two consecutive years: 2014 and 2015.
João Villaverde is fluent in English and a native Portuguese speaker. He is an advanced Spanish speaker and has basic command of Italian. His academic interests include understanding how emerging countries, such as the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), are positioned in the "Post Crisis World".