CGU report states that control mechanisms are fragile and unable to contain deviations; agency recommends that institute stop intermediating associative discounts in retirement and pensions
The (National Institute of Social Security) and Dataprev (Social Security Technology and Information Company) told the (Comptroller General of the Union) in June 2024 that they were unable to assess whether digital signatures of retirees and pensioners could ensure the validity of documents in which beneficiaries would authorize discounts for associations and unions directly on payroll.
The information is contained in a report produced by CGU from April to July 2024, but only released on Tuesday (6.MAI.2025). In the document, the agency weaves various criticisms of the INSS inability to ensure the safety of the operation and depend only on the good faith of accredited institutions. Read A (PDF – 1 MB).
“In this context, it proves to be one of the causes associated with the facts reported with the fragility of the instrument established to ensure the safety of these operations and consequently the beneficiaries, which is to use the principle of good faith to establish, in regulations that governing this relationship, that all documentation that would support the legitimacy of discounts of these tuitions were under the management and custody of the entities, and it is up to the INSS to request it only when the INSS is required to request it only when It understood necessary, not making consistent validations, even from sampling, in the procedure of analysis of the proposal to celebrate the ACT [acordo de cooperação técnica] before your signature, as well as in Act execution monitoring actions ”, says the text.
In the report, the CGU informs that, during the process of investigating irregularities of associations and unions, the INSS reported that it had no expert technical competence to validate the truth of “hashes ou logs” of own systems of association domain documentation repositories. For the agency, the validity of digital signatures was being based on the “Good faith and respect for the constitutional autonomy and public faith that associations and unions enjoy”.
The requirement for discounts to be authorized through biometrics began to apply in March 2024 with the Press/INSS Normative Instruction of 14 March 2024. The text establishes the need for advanced electronic signature and biometrics to authorize discounts.
According to CGU, the system presented by Dataprev in September 2024 to meet the new technical requirements was not accepted by the INSS on the grounds that it was necessary to improve it. At the time, the INSS authorized a provisional solution to the commitment that the associations and unions would pass on the digitized documentation of retirees and pensioners to Dataprev to release the collection. The CGU, however, says it did not identify that measures in this regard were in operation at the end of 2024.
“The maintenance of the deficiencies pointed out in the processes and procedures adopted by the INSS linked to the discounts of associative tuition fees, without the proper implementation of mitigating internal controls of the exhaustively pointed risks, makes the endorsement procedure increasingly susceptible to irregular discounts, especially due to the very directly affected audience fragility profile, in the vast majority formed by elderly,” says the report.
In the document, CGU recommends that the INSS fail to mediate monthly discounts for retirement and pensions associations and unions. The agency must draw up and submit to the Ministry of Social Security a proposal for discontinuation of the associative collection, since such intermediation is not mandatory.
The controllership states that such a attribution has a significant impact on the workflow of INSS employees, which affects the service to the population. The CGU also says that there are possibilities that retirees and pensioners will pay directly to associations by other means if they wish.
Discounts authorized by beneficiaries for associations and unions are allowed by law.
The CGU conclusions were presented in an audit in which technicians from the agency visited 29 associations and unions that kept technical cooperation agreements with the INSS and made discounts on the payroll.
The CGU says it identified fragility in the controls adopted by the INSS because of the low rate of associations and unions that had sufficient documentation that could prove that discounts were being done correctly. The agency said, however, that it did not evaluate if the documents were reliable.
The controllership also informed that the INSS did not respond satisfactorily by being notified of non -compliance by the associations about CGU’s requests to submit documents.
“Thus, it is concluded that exclusively the documents and information presented by the entities are not adequate and sufficient to demonstrate that they have operational capacity compatible with the agreed object, the amount of discounts performed and the geographical dispersion of affiliations.”says the text.
Like the Poder360the controllership has identified that only 29% of a sampling of 952 beneficiaries of the INSS (National Institute of Social Security) have complete documentation that proves the regularity of associative discounts made directly on the payroll of retirement and pensions.
According to the CGU, the unions presented incomplete documentation about the discount of another 32%. The rest, 40%, had no information presented.
The report also says that 76% of associations and unions visited could not prove the effectiveness of services provided to members and did not have proof of national action. According to the CGU, the INSS did not evaluate the operational capacity of the places and only replied what was presented by the associations in a self -declaratory manner.
The CGU identified that in 59 situations, from 2016 to 2024, where there was the mass insertion of new members, associations or unions recorded more than 50,000 names by the same entity in a single month. There would be 2,500 new authorizations on average per business day.
The explosion of cases was from April 2023 to August 2024 with 39 situations where at least 50,000 discounts made by 19 associations in a single month was included. The 10 largest records in the period show that it would be necessary to perform from 778 to 1,569 awards per hour, considering 20 business days with 8 hours of daily work.
