President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva changed today (7) three members of the Public Ethics Commission of the Presidency of the Republic. The decrees were published in the Official Diary of the Union. Two of the dismissed members had been appointed by former President Jair Bolsonaro at the end of his term, in November last year. They are Célio Faria Júnior, who was Bolsonaro’s chief of staff and chief minister of the Presidency’s Government Secretariat; and João Henrique Nascimento de Freitas, who was Bolsonaro’s special advisor.
Fábio Prieto de Souza, who had been in office since April 2022, was also dismissed. He was a federal judge and president of the Federal Regional Court of the 3rd Region and is the current Secretary of Justice and Citizenship of São Paulo.
The lawyer and attorney for the state of Bahia, Bruno Espiñeira Lemos; the retired judge of the Court of Justice of São Paulo, Kenarik Boujikian; and retired Paraná attorney and law professor, Manoel Caetano Ferreira Filho.
Moral suitability
The Public Ethics Commission is made up of seven members “who meet the requirements of moral suitability, unblemished reputation and notorious experience in public administration”.
The mandate is for three years, but appointments may be reviewed by the President of the Republic. The performance of the members is considered to provide a relevant public service, that is, without remuneration.
Created in 1999, the collegiate is an advisory body of the President of the Republic and the Ministers of State and is responsible for administering the application of the Code of Conduct of the High Federal Administration and solving doubts about the interpretation of both the norms of this code and the Code of Professional Ethics Civil Servant of the Federal Executive Power.
It is also responsible for enforcing the Conflict of Interests Law for senior federal government officials and also for coordinating, evaluating and supervising the Federal Government’s Public Ethics Management System.
