President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said on Tuesday (14), in a press conference in Brasilia, that the billionaire fraud involving improper discounts on INSS retirements originated in the previous government and may have been purposely articulated.
“Everyone knows this is a mistake made in the past government, possibly purposely,” said Lula. “We are not doing things yet, reporting still very strongly, because we have to find out. I am against making a complaint against someone if you have no proof.”
The president pointed out that the investigation is being conducted with caution to avoid unfounded accusations. “We don’t want to punish any entity hastily. So the caution I told CGU, which I told the Federal Police, a lot of caution so we don’t get a person to be crucified and then we don’t apologize.”
Lula compared the fraud to a “gang mounted on behalf of retirees, stealing retirees” and criticized what he called theft against the most vulnerable population. “In the old days, people stole bank. In the old days, people stole rich people. But now it’s poor stealing poor.”
The president also said that the government chose not to turn the case into a media spectacle, prioritizing the investigation. “We could have done a pyrotechnic show, as always done in this country. […] What did we do? We did what a serious government does. We put the Federal Police, the CGU, to do a thorough investigation of everything until we arrived where we wanted to go. ”
According to Lula, the priority will be to reimburse the injured beneficiaries. “We will return the money to the retirees who were injured by the gang. […] Those who were risen, and we will resurrect them immediately. ”
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The president stated that the entities involved will have the opportunity to present evidence of the regularity of the authorizations. “What we are asking is giving the entities a chance to make proof of the veracity of people’s signatures. So far they have not presented. If any present, it will be taken very seriously.”
