The government adopted an understanding that opens a loophole for the imposition of one on official correspondence exchanged by the president with heads of state and other international authorities.
Since 2023, the Civil House has denied all 12 requests, based on , for copies of official letters sent or received by Lula. The body argued that the missives were personal in nature and, therefore, were protected by the constitutional principle of confidentiality of correspondence.
By adopting this justification, the government leaves the documents unclassified, leaving no deadline for public release. The LAI provides for degrees of secrecy of 5, 15 and 25 years (reserved, secret and top secret, respectively).
The CGU (Comptroller General of the Union) and the CMRI (Mixed Information Reassessment Commission), which form the third and final instance of appeal based on the LAI, endorsed all the refusals submitted.
In a note, the Presidency of the Republic stated that “private correspondence has a constitutional provision for its protection and treatment”. According to Planalto, no letter from the current mandate was made available for public consultation. At the same time, he reaffirmed “this administration’s commitment to transparency and publicity of official acts”.
The CGU said, in a note, that the secrecy of correspondence can only be removed by means of a court order or with the agreement of the sender or recipient.
The secrecy of correspondence, provided for in the Constitution, has no expiration date. In this way, the letters would become part of the president’s private collection and would belong to the agent.
It is different from the protection of personal data, provided for in the LAI, which protects information for up to one hundred years — a procedure that was subject to criticism during the administration of former president Jair Bolsonaro.
Experts consulted by Sheet They claim to agree with the protection of the president’s private correspondence, even when it comes to communication with authorities. However, they point out the risk of exaggeration in the use of the argument.
Applying this understanding, the government denied access to the letter sent by the PT member to Vladimir Putin after , in March 2024, and to Javier Milei in April 2024.
The argument was also used to veto access to letters sent by Lula to IOC (International Olympic Committee) voters in 2009, during Rio de Janeiro’s campaign to host the 2016 Olympics — a request made by Sheet.
He was also asked to deny the availability of a list of correspondence from heads of state sent and received by Lula, without presenting the content. In this case, the CGU also considered that there is a “risk of negative impacts on Brazil’s diplomatic relations”, by indicating which authorities did not maintain contact with Lula. The decision did not indicate any classification given to the documents.
The guarantee of confidentiality of correspondence was used for the first time by the Lula government in 2023 after a request made to access all letters received by the president.
When analyzing the appeal, the CGU initially made a division between letters from ordinary citizens and heads of state. While the first should be preserved, the others should be made available, following “the principle of maximum disclosure of information”.
The Civil House requested reconsideration of the decision and, initially, an opinion from the (Advocacy General of the Union) maintained the advertising decision. However, a new document was prepared adopting the arguments that opened a breach for the “eternal secrecy” of the president’s official correspondence.
According to the latest opinion, the fact that the correspondence is addressed or sent by a head of state through official channels is not enough to “characterize it as belonging to public property”. This is because, according to the understanding, all of the president’s public and private activities are intermediated by state bodies.
“Unlike the common public agent, whose aspects of his public and private life develop in spaces that can be segmented, the high position and responsibilities in leading national life impose on the President of the Republic an entirely different way of life”, says the opinion.
The document argues that letters should be analyzed on a case-by-case basis before being made available to the public.
The AGU’s understanding was not adopted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. THE Sheet located a request made in 2024 in which Itamaraty made available a letter from Lula from that year to the president of Tunisia, Kaïs Saïed.
During the Bolsonaro government, Itamaraty also released access to a letter from former president Joe Biden to the former Brazilian president. The report did not find requests analyzed by the Civil House or the CGU in the previous administration.
Transparency was Lula’s flagship in the 2022 election contested against Bolsonaro. The current president criticized his predecessor for imposing secrecy considered indiscriminate on public information.
USP professor Marcos Augusto Perez, a specialist in administrative transparency, says he agrees with the AGU’s understanding. He defends case-by-case analysis because there is a possibility that the president may discuss personal matters with other heads of state. However, he points out that this prediction can lead to exaggerations and become “an easy excuse”.
“I think it would even be possible to consider all official correspondence from the Presidency, in certain contexts, to be at least reserved. But to say that it is all personal is an exaggeration. It says that it is personal, so there is no need to classify it,” he said.
The Presidency of the Republic said, in a statement, that it “reiterates this administration’s commitment to transparency and publicity of official acts, in strict compliance with current legislation”.
“Private correspondence has a constitutional provision for its protection and treatment. Therefore, in line with the secrecy of correspondence, provided for by the Federal Constitution (Art. 5, item XII), by the Access to Information Law (Art. 31), by the General Data Protection Law (Art. 2) and by other documents, no letter addressed to the President of the Republic was made available for public consultation during the current term of office”, says the note.
The federal government also reported that “a sample of letters received between 2003 and 2010” was sent to the National Archives after the end of Lula’s first two terms. He also declared that “there is no allocation to public collections during the exercise of the mandate”.
The CGU declared that the secrecy of correspondence “would only be removed through a court order or the agreement of the sender or recipient”. “This understanding is in agreement with the Joint Information Reevaluation Committee, in accordance with CMRI Decision No. 27/2025/CMRI/CC/PR.”
