The Minister of the Comptroller General of the Union (CGU), Vinicius Marques de Carvalho, said on Thursday (2) that he learned of irregular discounts on retirees and pensioners in March 2024, amid requests for information made by the press.
He, however, stressed that, since the previous government of Jair Bolsonaro in 2019, there was already, on the part of the Ministry’s technical teams, concerns about these discounts, due to some complaints presented to the controllership.
“Since 2019, more than 11 meetings of that working group discussed associative discounts,” said Carvalho during his participation in the Mixed Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (CPMI) that investigates illegal discounts on retirement and pensions.
Alert
According to the minister, CGU has since identified “two warning points” about these discounts. The first, relative to complaints that had been made on associative discounts. And the second warning point was related to the increase in amounts charged.
Asked by CPMI rapporteur, Deputy Alfredo Gaspar (Union-AL), when he would have become aware of these irregular discounts, the minister replied that it was in March 2024, after a series of requests made by journalists, via ACCESS TO INFORMATION LAW.
He added that the CGU technical area reported that, before journalistic articles, it was already doing a “work on these associative discounts, in the plans from 2023 to 2024”, amid more than 600 audits.
“What was not known was the size of the problem,” said the minister.
“There was a great concern because the number of entities that signed a technical cooperation agreement with the INSS had increased. That is, agreements that authorized these entities to make the discounts. There was a concern about the seriousness of these entities,” he added.
According to Carvalho, the increase in the number of discounts that occurred in 2022 and 2023 is due to compliance with the previous government’s budget law.
“I arrived at CGU in 2023. I think it is worth making a clarification. The audit plan is more or less like the budget, the government inherits the approved budget law of the last year of the previous government. We inherited the CGU audit plan made in 2022 to execute it in 2023. And we executed. Our first audit plan was only done in 2023,” he explained.
Secrecy
Asked by the rapporteur about statements published in the press, attributed to CGU servants, raising suspicions that some information considered confidential would not have been included in CGU reports, the minister said there are several “legal imperatives” that may make the confidentiality of information necessary to prevent the investigation from risk.
He, however, assured that the report was made public in its integrity, since, after Federal Police operations, this information could be made public.
“Then, with the operation performed, there was no reason to have something confidential in the report,” he added.
