of the Federal Police on Friday (12), the Budget continues with a system that is not very transparent and that keeps the sponsors of more than R$1 billion in funds hidden, even after the (Supreme Federal Court) and demands that the Legislature.
Months after the agreement that unlocked the payment of funds, the model adopted proved to be inconsistent: consultation of the Sheet based on the year 2025, shows that the data is spread across more than 40 files on the websites of the Chamber and Senate committees, with layout errors, links that make consultation difficult and formats that do not allow the data to be worked on.
Transparency portals prevent anyone from knowing who indicated the expense paid, since the authorship on government portals is that of the commission itself; and almost 10% of the funds do not even identify the author, maintaining the use of so-called leadership amendments — a device where party leaders collect requests from their benches, but sign the allocation of the resource, hiding their true sponsor.
In May of this year, the Minister of the Supreme Court, decided that this mechanism could only be used to direct resources from the parliamentarian who holds the position, and could not be used to hide who actually indicated the funds.
Congress also created an electronic system (Sinec) for recording amendments and sending them to committees and, later, to the government, but access is exclusive to the Legislature. Disclosure is made individually on the committees’ pages, which do not always consolidate the data.
Some of the nominations, for example, ended up being rejected due to errors in the registration (incorrect city name or CNPJ, for example) and were redone, without this having been identified in the minutes. This way, the numbers may appear doubled. As the same amendment contains a large volume of indications, it is practically impossible to know which parliamentarian ended up benefiting from the payment.
Last Friday (12), the PF carried out an operation against the diversion of resources from parliamentary amendments at addresses linked to Mariângela Fialek, known as Tuca, advisor who coordinated the distribution of funds during the administration of former President of the Chamber Arthur Lira (PP-AL) and continued with this role under the presidency of (-PB).
For Dino, who authorized the PF operation, “there are elements that indicate that, despite the change of command at , the investigated party would still maintain an important role in the already known attempts to perpetuate the ill-fated secret budget.” Search and seizure, where the server usually dispatches.
Tuca stated, through lawyers, that he fulfilled a “technical, non-partisan and impersonal” role and that all the material seized was public. Motta and Lira came out in defense of the assistant, arguing that she was an employee of the Chamber and that there was no irregularity in the direction of the amendments.
At the end of 2024, Dino blocked R$4.2 billion in commission amendments, due to a lack of transparency. These resources replaced the old rapporteur’s amendments, which were known for keeping the distribution of billions in public money to the electoral bases of deputies and senators secret, with political and confidential transfer criteria. Part is investigated for deviations and irregularities.
Congress negotiated an agreement with the Supreme Court to release payment for commission amendments and approve a bill to ensure that the name of the parliamentarian who indicated the resources would be made public. The proposal, however, still allowed parliamentarians to circumvent Dino’s determination, designating the leader of the party bench as the author.
Survey carried out by Sheet in the minutes of the commissions, it was identified that at least R$1 billion remains hidden under the name of the party leadership. The leadership of the PP of the Chamber, for example, distributed around R$358 million in this way – it was the party that used this method the most.
Most of the resources went to Piauí (state of the party president, senator Ciro Nogueira), with R$189 million. Next is Rio de Janeiro, the electoral base of the leader of the party in the Chamber, with R$80 million, in addition to Tocantins and Alagoas (home of former president Arthur Lira), with R$19 million each.
Leader of the PP in the Chamber, deputy dr. Luizinho Texeira (RJ) told Sheet that “all amendments have their parliamentarians responsible”, and that perhaps the system has wrongly linked resources that would go to other deputies as being authored by the leadership.
Other acronyms that indicated the most resources under the nickname “leader’s amendment” were , with R$266 million directed to 15 states, and the Republicans, with R$201 million. Hugo Motta, according to the spreadsheets, indicated R$180 million in his name, but another R$77 million was directed to Paraíba under the heading of the Republican leader, whose acronym is the main name in the state.
Also included in the spreadsheets are those responsible for amendments by “party leader” Solidariedade, Avante, Podemos and PL, the party of former president Jair Bolsonaro and which opposes the Lula (PT) government.
Another problem is with the data itself. The documents that appear on the Chamber’s amendment pages and contain non-standardized information, not compiled and with wrong links, and even with the use of artificial intelligence, the Sheet was not able to systematize the information to ensure that it was comparable.
In most commissions, the data is in PDF files, which makes reading difficult. There are few that make the consolidated files available in an editable format, such as Excel, which would allow them to be analyzed.
Furthermore, part of the files contain information that is already out of date, according to technicians familiar with the matter.
The government has made changes to the Transparency Portal, among other channels for disseminating information about federal expenses, but it is still not possible to locate the author of part of the parliamentary amendments.
There are around R$50.4 billion in parliamentary amendments available in the 2025 Budget, of which R$39.1 billion has been committed and around R$27.4 billion has been paid.
When contacted, the General Comptroller of the Union (CGU) stated that it will make authorship information available until 2024. “The completion of the Work Plan will take place soon and will allow the integration of the Transparency Portal [com] data on support and requests for Commission Amendments for the 2025 financial year and subsequent years”, said the ministry.
