Monitoring the appropriate use of public money requires resources, dedication, technical training and, above all, independence. Those who supervise need to have autonomy in relation to those who are supervised. About to be voted on by , a tortoise is hiding that threatens precisely this principle.
Presented by the Executive Branch in 2017, the project creates the General Public Governance Law, consolidating practices currently dispersed in decrees, infra-legal standards and recommendations from control bodies. The text contains important advances, such as a focus on control and prevention, valuing social participation, a risk management model and the obligation to publicize these mechanisms.
But, upon passing through , the project received a change that contradicts its own logic: permission to outsource public audits. In the last article, parliamentarians opened the door for the manager responsible for the supervised public organization to hire their own independent auditor.
“The control of public action is incompatible with market logic. The client is the one who hires and who pays, and this leaves room for conflicts of interest”, Laura Mendes Amando Barros, attorney, former general controller of the Municipality of São Paulo and professor at Insper, told the column.
the ABJD (Brazilian Association of Jurists for Democracy) denounces the section as a deeply problematic structural inflection and opposes the supposed gain in efficiency: “Outsourcing the audit creates an additional problem: who will control the private controllers? The likely result will be more bureaucracy, more costs and less effectiveness.”
It is also worth remembering that the recent track record of large auditing firms is not the best either. In the two main financial scandals of recent years, and Banco Master, companies audited financial statements that recorded billions in assets later found to be non-existent. The Securities and Exchange Commission, in turn, has a history of even when its own technical area identifies violations of accounting procedures and standards.
The situation becomes even more worrying because the text is not limited to companies; it also authorizes individuals to exercise the role of controllers of public resources. Now, just imagine if any meter registered with the CVM could audit the risks, plans and accounts of a ministry? Frankly.
We are not saying that control mechanisms today are perfect; on the contrary, this column exists to point out the various problems that exist. But that’s not the way.
PL 3,995/2024 contains positive measures and deserves to be advanced. But it is essential that the Senate remove article 16 completely and guarantee the integrity of the public control system.
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