The federal government made public, this Thursday (12), the expenses with the corporate card of former presidents of the Republic between 2003 and 2022. Governed by a federal decree, the government spending card is used to pay material expenses and provide services, such as accommodation, transportation and food, for example.
According to the Minister of the Social Communication Secretariat of the Presidency (Secom), Paulo Pimenta, the release of this information – which covers the mandates of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2010), Dilma Rousseff (2011-2016), Michel Temer (2016 -2018) and Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022) – complies with a determination by the Federal Court of Auditors (TCU), taken in November last year. Since 2017, according to the minister, the court of accounts has been discussing how this information should be disclosed.
Through the Access to Information Lawdata that put the president and vice president at risk, including spouses and family members, must be kept confidential until the end of the term.
“The Judgment [do TCU] on 11/30 determined that the disclosure must be made and with active transparency, therefore, published on the government’s transparency website”, explained Pimenta.
To comply with the determination, the previous government would have made the data available until 2018, at the end of December. On January 6, with the end of Bolsonaro’s term, data from the period 2019 to 2022 were also included.
The availability of the numbers is also due to a request from the Sejam Sabendo agency, specialized in accessing public information.
According to the spreadsheets available, former president Jair Bolsonaro, who ended his term at the end of last year, spent around R$ 27.6 million between 2019 and 2022 on the corporate card. Most of the expenses refer to accommodation (R$ 13.7 million), both in domestic and international trips; food and supermarket (R$ 10.2 million). There are also expenses with supplies and other expenses.
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According to Paulo Pimenta, this data now available on the presidential corporate card does not refer to other secrets that are under analysis by the Comptroller General of the Union (CGU). On January 1, shortly after taking office, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed a decree ordering the CGU to analyze the need to maintain or raise the secrecy of a series of data.
The minister explained that, over the last 4 years, more than 65,000 information requested by citizens on the Transparency Portal were denied access. Of these, 2,000 information remained, in which the applicants filed appeals, and which will be up to the CGU to give the final word. The body has until the end of this month to issue an opinion, according to Lula’s decree.
