A admitted errors in presenting payment information after questioning the Sheet and attributed the problem to the manual filling of a database with almost 13 thousand entries.
Defenders are entitled to compensation to cover travel expenses when working outside the municipality where they are registered. But almost 200 records on the transparency portal of the São Paulo Public Defender’s Office indicated commitments in the same city where the server operates, something that is not provided for by law.
The current daily rate is R$934.47. Hearings and prison visits are among the commitments that give the right to payment of the benefit.
When consulted, the institution first stated that there were no daily payments for defenders working at their headquarters. After further questioning by the report, he said he had found “a mistake in the table”.
“To meet the requirements of , payment data is placed in an editable Excel spreadsheet, and this is completed manually, not being an automatic data extraction”, said the agency.
The SP Defender’s Office stated that it was correcting the information. The data remained unchanged until the publication of this report, more than 40 days after the institution’s response.
The agency informed the Sheet that the city where each defender officially works was incorrect in the cases highlighted by the report. According to the Defender’s Office, the error does not affect payments, which are made through another internal system, the SEI (Electronic Information System).
The body also said that SEI data is audited annually by the TCE-SP (State Audit Court).
Citizens without a formal link with the SP Defender’s Office do not have direct access to the SEI system. Anyone can request information and public documents from the Public Defender’s Office through the Citizen Information Service (SIC), available on the institution’s website, according to the agency.
Under current rules, the full daily rate for defenders in São Paulo. Until 2018, an internal deliberation provided for lower payments for short journeys, without overnight stays or for a few hours. This rule was revoked by a decision of the Advisory Council after being the target of “countless judicial decisions due to the illegality of the escalation”, according to the Ombudsman’s Office.
The data available on the SP Public Defender’s Office’s transparency portal, which goes up to August 2025, shows R$2.46 million paid in daily payments up to that period of the year. Throughout 2024, the total reaches R$2.65 million. The gross salary of a public defender in São Paulo starts at almost R$30 thousand, at the beginning of the career, and exceeds R$33 thousand in higher positions.
The problem identified in the Public Defender’s Office spreadsheet cannot be treated as a banal system failure or as a technical limitation foreseen in the LAI, says the executive director of the NGO Transparência Brasil, Juliana Sakai.
“The LAI has been in force for 14 years, using it as an argument to worsen transparency is no longer acceptable”, he states.
There are simple and widely available tools that allow automatic export of data in an open format, without relying on manual filling, according to the expert.
“SEI is used by practically the entire public administration, and the technologies are shareable.”
For Sakai, the fact that the agency claims that reliable data is in a system that is inaccessible to the public without a formal request and, at the same time, keeps tables known to be incorrect available, places the onus on society to detect and correct public information.
“We are talking about a type of sensitive data, of strong public interest, associated with the risk of corruption. The moment you know it is wrong, not correcting it opens the door to characterization of administrative improbity, as it starts to consciously disclose untrue information. This directly violates what determines the LAI.”
When asked whether defenders need to present proof, such as invoices, to justify the expenses that led to the daily allowance, the SP Defender’s Office informed that, “as it is a daily allowance and not expense reimbursement, there is no need for proof of expenditure, just authorization for travel”.
“Per diem requests are signed by the applicant, the corresponding administrative manager (unit, regional or Deputy Defense Coordinator) and payments authorized by the General Administration Coordination”, says the agency.
