Rodrigo Antunes / LUSA
Luís Montenegro greets the new Attorney General of Justice, Amadeu Guerra
PGR pushes the issue to ECFP, which only gave information about three parties: ADN, CDS-PP and PCTP-MRPP.
Political parties and other candidates owe the State more than 1.4 million euros in finesbut the Attorney General’s Office (PGR) does not reveal which political forces are involved, nor to which years, accounts or electoral acts these debts relate.
Questioned by , the PGR confirmed that, on April 22, the amount owed reached R$ 1,401,893.62. But he did not provide any further information — not even about the debtor parties or candidacies, the origin of the fines and whether the amounts were in payment or already overdue.
The institution forwarded the response to the Political Accounts and Financing Entity (ECFP), an independent body that works alongside the Constitutional Court. The ECFP, in turn, only provided information relating to three parties: DNA, CDS-PP and PCTP-MRPP. But in total, the cases of the three parties detailed represent around 28 thousand euros, according to Público, which is a far cry from the 1.4 million euros identified by the PGR.
According to the response sent through the Constitutional Court’s external relations office, the ECFP can only inform about fines that are under its direct management, that is, processes still within a voluntary payment period or in which payment in installments has been authorized.
This is the case of ADN, which has 6433.50 euros in voluntary payment period, CDS-PP, with 15,370 euros in installments, and PCTP-MRPP, with 6390 euros also in phased payment.
The lack of transparency results, in part, from the dispersion of skills. When an ECFP sanctioning decision is appealed, the process goes to the Constitutional Court and, after final judgment, it does not return to the Entity, with the Court itself being responsible for executing and controlling the payment. In cases where there is no appeal or voluntary payment, the ECFP issues debt certificates and sends them to the PGR, for executive action, passing monitoring to the Public Ministry.
Since 2010, the PGR has had a computer application created to monitor fines imposed by the Constitutional Court in matters of party and electoral accounts. According to data from the Public Ministry from 2023, between 1997 and the end of that year, 641 fines had been imposed, totaling 5.7 million euros, of which around 1.26 million remained unpaid.
The topic comes at a time when the Assembly of the Republic is discussing new rules on the publicization of party financing, following the ECFP’s controversial decision to hide the identity of donors on donation lists.
