The Federal Senate Inspection, Transparency and Control Commission (CTFC) approved the request of Senator Fabiano Contarato (PT-ES) which asks Minister Luiz Eduardo Ramos, from the General Secretariat, for information on the expenses of corporate cards of the Presidency of the Republic, this Tuesday (22). Ramos has up to 30 days to respond to the request. Otherwise, he is subject to denunciation for a crime of responsibility.
According to Contarato, the Presidency refuses to provide the information, even after a decision by the Federal Supreme Court (STF) in November 2019, which overturned confidentiality.
“In disobedience to constitutional principles and the decisions of the Federal Supreme Court, the Presidency of the Republic has refused to provide detailed and individualized information on the use of these cards, assigning the label of ‘secret’ to information on expenditures”, said the senator. .
The senator requested information on expenses incurred between 2019 and 2022, with the name and CPF of the bearer, responsible for authorizing the expense, name and CNPJ of the beneficiary and amounts involved. In the period, expenses totaled around R$ 30 million, according to the Transparency Portal.
“The current management uses corporate cards indiscriminately and with little fiscal responsibility, which contrasts with the serious situation in which the federal government’s public accounts live. of the country and for social policies aimed at the poorest strata of society, corporate card spending only increases”, said Contarato during the session that approved the application.
President Jair Bolsonaro (PL), during conversation with supporters, recognized the values and tried to justify them. “My expense is big, yes. Tomorrow and Wednesday I will spend around 300 thousand on the corporate card, with two trips to the Northeast. Almost everything here is financed with a corporate card. Can I go to the Northeast with two security guards? No, I have to go 50,” she declared. Contarato also called the Federal Audit Court (TCU) to investigate Bolsonaro’s corporate card spending.
The president of the CTFC, Senator Reguffe (Podemos-DF), stated that Brazilian society has the right to know “how every penny of that money is spent. They are taxes of Brazilian society. All these expenditures need to be detailed and publicly known.”
In peace to PGR
On the same day that corporate card spending came into the sights of the Federal Senate, Minister Bruno Dantas, of the Federal Court of Accounts (TCU), sent the request for blocking of assets from presidential candidate Sergio Moro (Podemos), to the attorney Lucas Furtado, from the Public Ministry of Accounts, the Attorney General’s Office (PGR) and the Federal Revenue.
The TCU also decided to share with the PGR the documents about the amounts received by Moro as an employee of the American consulting firm Alvarez & Marsal (A&M), which is the judicial administrator of companies that were investigated by Operação Lava Jato.
::Sergio Moro received more than R$3.5 million from Alvarez & Marsal: “I didn’t get rich”::
Minister Bruno Dantas says, in the order, that the factors need to “be better determined”. “If, on the one hand, the documentation already contained in the case file does not yet characterize the irregularities pointed out in the initial, it is more than enough to justify the continuation of the investigations”, he wrote.
The objective is to verify if Moro committed any crime when he went from being a judge in Operação Lava Jato to an A&M employee, for his own benefit, involving a conflict of interest. The former judge remained at A&M for 13 months after he left the government of Jair Bolsonaro.
According to the decision, A&M “received around BRL 40 million from companies sentenced in Lava Jato, of which BRL 1 million per month from Odebrecht e Ativos (former agro-industrial company), BRL 150,000 from Galvão Engenharia, BRL 97,000 from OAS and R$ 115 thousand monthly from the Enseada Shipyard.”
::Sergio Moro is associated with “revolving door” for his work at Alvarez & Marsal. What is the practice?::
“I order the sending of a full copy of these records to the Attorney General of the Republic so that he can examine the matter and, if he deems this the case, determine the measures for its investigation, as well as regarding the pertinence of the eventual blocking of assets claimed by the Public Prosecutor’s Office. of Accounts”, says Dantas in the decision.
Now will you?
For federal deputy Aécio Neves (PSDB-MG) the scenario is not the best either. The Federal Public Ministry in São Paulo (MPF) once again asked for his conviction for the crime of passive corruption and the removal of his mandate in the Chamber.
The toucan is accused of receiving the famous suitcases, which traveled from São Paulo to Minas Gerais, with R$ 2 million from the then president of J&F, Joesley Batista, in 2017, when he was a senator. The payment was confirmed by Joesley Batista and Ricardo Saud, former director of J&F.
Also responsible for the crime are Aécio Neves’ sister, Andrea Neves da Cunha, who requested the amount of money on behalf of the parliamentarian, and Frederico Pacheco de Medeiros and Mendherson Souza Lima, responsible for transporting the bags.
In In a note, the MPF reported that “evidence gathered in the process confirms that Aécio Neves personally reiterated the request for money done before by your sister. This is what a recording made by Joesley in a meeting with the former senator shows, in which the congressman arranges for the delivery of the installments to his cousin Frederico de Medeiros”. “The MPF has no doubt that the case denounced constitutes passive corruption.”
For the organ, Joesley Batista intended to “buy good relations” and count on the senator as a political ally. According to the Attorney General of the Republic Rodrigo de Grandis, author of the MPF’s demonstration, the commercialization of the role of a parliamentarian is evident “which, in the end, entails the inversion of the principle of the supremacy of the public interest over the private interest”.
“In this way, what is incriminated is a kind of harmful symbiosis between the public and the private that does not require the occurrence of any counterpart on the part of the public agent, the mere potentiality of the functional act being sufficient”, writes Grandis.
In a note, the defense of Aécio Neves said that the Public Ministry “surprisingly ignored the fact that the whistleblowers themselves, when heard in court, ruled out any illegality involving the loan made to the Deputy which, according to them, had no counterpart. The evidence made it clear that there was no crime and the defense is calmly awaiting the assessment by the Judiciary.”
got off the hot seat
If Bolsonaro, Moro and Aécio Neves were placed at the center of the dispute, presidential candidate Ciro Gomes (PDT) had reason to celebrate the Brazilian judiciary.
The 4th Panel of the Regional Court of the 5th Region (TRF-5) unanimously annulled the search and seizure action by the Federal Police (PF) against the former governor of Ceará, carried out in December last year, within the scope of Operation Colesseum.
The PF is investigating the alleged embezzlement of funds and payment of R$ 11 million in bribes, with fraudulent invoices issued by shell companies, in the renovation of the Arena Castelão stadium, in Fortaleza, between 2010 and 2013. The judges stated that the action could not have occurred so long from the investigated facts and accepted the habeas corpus brought by the defense of the former minister.
On social media, Ciro Gomes celebrated the decision and said that “it honors the Brazilian judiciary”. “Even in the moments of greatest indignation I never doubted that truth and justice prevailed over arbitrariness, manipulation and arrogance,” he wrote.
At the time, Gomes stated on social media that he has “no doubt that this late and unreasonable action has the clear objective of trying to damage my pre-candidacy for the presidency of the republic. In the same way, they tried 15 days before the first round of the 2018 election. Bolsonaro’s police state arm, which treats opponents as enemies to be physically destroyed, rises again against me”.
Even with the decision, “the investigations continue and the process remains under judicial secrecy”, informed the TRF-5 in a note.
Speaking of candidates…
Speaking of candidates, the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Arthur Lira (PP-AL), declared support for President Jair Bolsonaro for re-election, as a matter of “party coherence”, during a conference promoted by the bank BTG Pactual.
“The president of my party [Ciro Nogueira] is the Minister of the Civil House. Today, he is licensed from the party. I am the Speaker of the House. So he has one assignment and I have another. I do not interfere in party decisions and he does not interfere in the decisions of the House presidency. It was like that already in the time of leadership of the party. So, of course, for reasons of coherence, I don’t run away, if I have the president of my party as minister of the Civil House, if my party is from the base of the government, deputy Arthur Lira, in the state [de Alagoas]for consistency, should campaign for President Bolsonaro”, said Lira.
third way
The governor of São Paulo, João Doria (PSDB), and Sergio Moro (Podemos), also spoke at the same event. Both agreed on the need to strengthen a name as the third way to Bolsonaro and former president Lula (PT).
Doria said that he remains in the presidential race, but that he does not rule out a change later on. “I will not put my personal project ahead of what has always been my nature, which made me proud to be Brazilian. My country, of the people of my country, is more important than myself. If I get there and, there, I have to offer my support so that Brazil no longer has this sad dichotomy of the nightmare of having Lula and Bolsonaro, I will be on the side of the one or many who will be able to offer a better condition for Brazil”, he said.
In the same vein, Moro said that, as he is in third place in the polls, he has no reason to abdicate his candidacy. The former judge also stated that there should already be a union around the proposal of the third way. “In my opinion, we should already be united. I think it’s an illusion to think that we have so much time in the world, because the extremes have machines that destroy people.”
Da CPI ao PT
While candidates in the third position from the polls down are discussing a name for the third way, Lula continues to recruit allies for his electoral campaign. This time, Senator Randolfe Rodrigues (Rede-AP), who was vice president of the Pandemic CPI, accepted Lula’s invitation to be one of the campaign coordinators.
In a meeting on Monday (21), the PT party stated that the senator would be very “useful” putting efforts in building a base for the Lula government, in case it wins the elections, in the National Congress.
“Comrade Randolfe will have to walk around Brazil, because the northern region of Brazil is very large, it is very extensive, and he has to talk to many men, many women, many Indians, many riverine people, many rural workers, many intellectuals and with many young people”, says Lula in a video. “I cannot give up sharing this campaign and, God willing, this victory with comrade Randolfe. He will be a very important piece.”
Editing: Vivian Virissimo
