At the request of the Federal Police, the court ordered the breach of the telematic secrecy of the former president of the INSS, Alessandro Stefanutto, accused of being involved in the scheme of irregular discounts in retirees and pensioners. The objective is to deepen the investigation within the scope of operation “without discount”. Another 12 people also had broken confidentiality.
According to Judge Frederico Botelho de Barros Viana, from the 15th Federal Criminal Court of Brasilia, there is evidence of crimes commitments, and therefore it is necessary to “rob the probative set, identify the INSS servers that receive improper advantage from associative entities and their financial operators and to ease any products and/or economic profits of the criminal contract”.
According to the PF, Stefanutto authorized improper discounts on retirees and pensioners after publicly announced that he would trigger the Federal Police to investigate fraud allegations.
Pressured by the Comptroller General of the Union (CGU), which issued successive alerts about irregular discounts, Stefanutto promised to be “quite hard” with entities that were involved in fraud and ensured that the PF would be notified to investigate the suspicions. The statements are from April 2024 and were published on the INSS website.
In March 2024, Stefanutto suspended the collection of associative discounts until the development of safest mechanisms of authorization and identity verification, such as retirees’ facial biometrics and advanced electronic signature, resources that would still be developed by the Dataprev (Dataprev) technology and information company.
The suspension was formalized in a normative instruction that exempted the INSS from liability for undue discounts for benefits from retirees and pensioners.
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The former INSS president also promised to review the closed technical cooperation agreement with associations and entities for associative monthly discounts.
It turns out that, according to the PF, “despite the apparent advertising diligence”, internally the INSS direction sought a transient solution that would enable the resumption of discounts, which actually happened.
“Exceptional unlocking”
The PF points out that, in June 2024, Stefanutto ordered the “exceptional unlocking” of discounts for the benefit of investigated entities, even without the technical requirements defined by Dataprev and without normative prediction.
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“In this context, the actions disclosed by the INSS to impose greater rigor and control on the implementation of associative discounts did not achieve the effects to which they were proposed, as the municipality’s direction authorized exceptionalizations to the rules of conducting the matter, without having a normative prediction for it or, even, analyzes that could support the interest of retirees and/or pensioners in the acts,” Federal Police in the representation of the operation without discount.
The Federal Police stare that “the only interest in vogue and observed by the INSS management was that of the associative entities.”
According to the PF, the INSS summit ignored information and alerts received by different means and different control bodies to reverse “precarious authorizations granted” to discounts.
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In addition to resuming ongoing discounts, the INSS allowed 785,309 new slaughter, encompassing 32 entities, based solely on the commitment of the associations.
Batch discounts
The PF also suspects an authorization from the INSS president for the so -called batch unlock and automatic discounts in at least 34,000 pensions and pensions for the benefit of the National Confederation of Agriculture Workers (Contag).
Researchers say the endorsement was granted in a scenario of “lack of any kind of control by the INSS about the veracity of the information presented” by the entity.
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At first, the INSS summit denied Contag’s request. In October 2023, Virgílio Antônio Ribeiro de Oliveira Filho, then head of the INSS Federal Attorney’s Office, changed his position and issued a favorable opinion to the request.
According to the PF, Virgílio Antônio received R $ 12 million intermediaries from suspected associations of billionaire fraud against retirees and pensioners.
Former Director of Benefits and Relationship with Citizen, André Paulo Félix Fidélis, agreed with the opinion and sent the document to the office of the president of the INSS. The Federal Police also identified suspicious transfers to Fidelis, in the order of $ 5 million.
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In November 2023, Stefanutto signed the INSS authorization for batch discounts in favor of Contag. He states in the document that the decision is based on the “principle of good faith” and the “declaration of responsibility” of the Confederation.
(With Estadão Content)
