ABSTRACT
In 1997 the Rede Brasil sobre Instituções Financieiras Multilaterais (Rede Brasil, Brazilian Network on Multilateral Financial Institutions), a civil society network that specializes in international financial institutions (IFIs), received through NGO colleagues in the North a copy of the secret Country Assistance Strategy (CAS) for Brazil. The CAS is the World Bank Group business plan that establishes and justifies the goals and priorities for a particular country over a given time period. In 1996 the NGO Working Group on the World Bank, a worldwide platform that seeks to influence Bank policy, had made civil society participation in the CAS process and public disclosure of the document two of its main objectives.
