José Carlos Oliveira also commanded the INSS, has an electronic ankle bracelet and entered the last government supported by Centrão; has been affiliated with the PSD since 2024
José Carlos Oliveira, former Minister of Labor and Social Security from March to December 2022, during the (PL) government, has a direct political connection with the national president of the PSD, Gilberto Kassab. On Thursday (November 13, 2025), Oliveira was the target of the Federal Police’s No Discount operation. He is accused of being involved in pension discount fraud. He was not arrested, but he is wearing an electronic ankle monitor and is being monitored. The PF also ordered a search and seizure at all addresses linked to him.
On February 5, 2024, Oliveira joined the PSD, the party for which he ran in the city of São Paulo. He received 16,550 votes and was not elected. He had already briefly occupied a councilor seat in the city of São Paulo from October to December 2012, also for the PSD in his first stint with the party. He was a substitute and ended up staying in the chair for that period.
Upon joining the PSD in February 2024, Oliveira appears in local newspaper reports posing alongside Gilberto Kassab. The website Grupo Sul News published a text with phrases from the national president of the PSD: “I had the privilege of living with Oliveira in my first term, in 1992, when I was elected councilor […] A relationship, trust and a very strong political partnership with Oliveira was already born there. […] Oliveira’s affiliation is the affiliation of a very determined person”Kassab said at the time.
CONNECTION WITH CENTRÃO
Before becoming Minister of Social Security in the Bolsonaro administration, Oliveira commanded the INSS from November 2021 to March 2022, when he took over as Minister of Social Security. He remained in office until the end of the previous government. He was nominated to the INSS by the PSD with the support of other Centrão parties, a bloc that gave political support to the government, according to the newspaper. The State of S. Paulo at the time.
According to the newspaper, Oliveira was also close to former PTB deputy Arnaldo Faria de Sá (1945-2022), for whom he was parliamentary secretary from 2014 to 2016. At the time he was nominated for the presidency of the INSS, Faria de Sá was a councilor in São Paulo for the PP. Oliveira was also close to politicians from the MDB and PL.
Oliveira joined the INSS in 1985 as an administrative agent, when the body was still called the National Social Security Institute (INPS). He was director of INSS Benefits and superintendent of the municipality in the Southeast.
According to the Federal Police, during his tenure as head of the INSS, Oliveira signed and authorized several ACTs (Technical Cooperation Agreements) with associative entities suspected of having made illegal deductions in retirement and pensions. In September, he gave a statement to the INSS CPMI, in which he said that the agreements were signed in a “automatic” and that the body was unable to monitor all of them.
One of the contracts under suspicion was signed with Ambec (Association of Mutual Retirees for Collective Benefits), one of the main people investigated in the Sem Desconto operation. The entity had only 3 members, but, after Oliveira’s approval, membership and fundraising grew significantly.
SCHEME IN “FULL WORKING”
According to the petition issued by the minister of the STF (Supreme Federal Court) André Mendonça, who authorized the operation on Thursday, the Federal Police identified messages intercepted from Oliveira’s cell phone that show that the scheme of undue discounts on pensions “it was fully operational” during the period in which he was Minister of Labor and Social Security in the Bolsonaro government. According to the police, there is evidence that he received money illegally during the period.
“José Carlos Oliveira was, according to the PF report, one of the institutional pillars that allowed the Conafer fraud to operate. As Director of Benefits and later minister, he authorized illegal transfers and received undue advantages”, says the document.
According to investigations, Oliveira was in contact with businessman Cícero Marcelino de Souza Santos, considered the group’s financial operator. “On several occasions, those investigated referred to him as [Oliveira] as ‘São Paulo’, discussing payments and political ‘support’ necessary to avoid the suspension of the ACT and INSS audits. Conversations intercepted in February 2023 show Cícero saying (sic) that ‘São Paulo was already in the spreadsheet and I already ordered the check to be deposited’, demonstrating systematic payments of bribes to José Carlos”says the document.
