Brazil ex-presidents’ corporate card expenses disclosed

Brazil government on Thursday (Jan. 12) made public the expenses with the corporate card of former country`s presidents between 2003 and 2022. Ruled by a federal decree, the government's spending card is used to pay for material expenses and privision of services, such as lodging, transportation and meals, for example.

Minister of the president`s Communication Secretariat (Secom) Paulo Pimenta said the disclosure of this information - covering the terms of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2010), Dilma Rousseff (2011-2016), Michel Temer (2016-2018), and Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022) - meets a determination of the government`s Court of Audit (TCU), from November last year. Since 2017, the court has been discussing how this information should be disclosed, Pimenta explained.

According to the Access to Information Act, data that put at risk the president and vice president, including spouses and family members, must be kept confidential until the end of the term of office.

"The Court of Audit`s ruling of November 30, 2022 determined that the disclosure must be made and with active transparency, therefore it must be published on the government's transparency website," Pimenta explained.

To comply with this determination, the previous government made the data available until 2018, at the end of December. On January 6, with the end of Bolsonaro's term, the data for the period 2019 to 2022 were also included.

Former president Jair Bolsonaro, who ended his term at the end of last year, spent about BRL 27.6 million between 2019 and 2022 on the corporate card. Most of the expenses refer to lodging (BRL 13.7 million), both in domestic and international travels; food and supermarket (BRL 10.2 million). Expenses with fuel and other items have also been registered, spreadsheets read.

Resources

These data now available about the presidential corporate card do not refer to other secrets under analysis by the Comptroller General Office. On January 1, 2023, when President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took office, he signed a decree ordering the office to analyze the need to maintain or lift the confidentiality of a series of data, Paulo Pimenta added.

 The minister explained that, over the past four years, more than 65,000 pieces of information requested by citizens on the Transparency Portal had their access denied. Of these, 2 thousand pieces of information remain under analysis, due to appeals filed by requesters, and it is up to the office to give the final word. The body must disclose its decision until the end of this month, according to the decree signed by Lula.