 Because of this, NEC Brazil ceded shareholder control of the company to the private equity group Brasilinvest of Brazilian investment banker Mário Garnero.Prior to military rule, during the re-democratization period, NEC Brazil had become the major supplier of telecommunications equipment to the Brazilian government.In 1986, the then Minister of Communications Antônio Carlos Magalhães put NEC Brazil in financial difficulties by suspending all government contract payments to the company, whose main client was the federal government.