29/11/2023 – 20:23
The Federal Court of Auditors (TCU) concluded that there were irregularities in the actions of pastors at the Ministry of Education and in the sending of funds to build “fake schools” during the government of former president Jair Bolsonaro. The schemes were revealed by Estadão and led to the arrest of former Education Minister Milton Ribeiro.
In March 2022, the Estadão revealed that a parallel cabinet of pastors controlled the MEC’s agenda and the release of funds. The scheme involved asking for bribes in gold and hidden in a tire. Furthermore, the ministry authorized the construction of 2,000 schools without sufficient budget through the National Education Development Fund (FNDE), controlled by the then Minister of the Civil House, Ciro Nogueira.
The TCU concluded that the FNDE did not use a ranking to choose the municipalities served with the funds released by the municipality. The court report states that no objective technical criteria were identified for the payment of resources.
In one of the cases, revealed by the report, the mayor and the municipal secretary of Education of Guatapará (SP) participated in a meeting at the MEC with the presence of pastors Gilmar dos Santos and Arilton Moura on December 23, 2020. The following day, there was a commitment of R$3 million to the municipality.
“This entire situation reveals the existence of an institutional environment favorable to the practice of favoring, during the pandemic, federated entities whose representatives, institutional or not, had access to FNDE directors, who could direct these resources according to criteria they considered more convenient”, says the TCU ruling approved on the 22nd.
O Estadão also revealed that an FNDE consultant invoiced at least R$2.4 million to facilitate the receipt of funds by city halls in Maranhão. Darwin Einstein de Arruda Nogueira Lima accessed FNDE’s electronic systems and initiated processes involving municipalities that contracted the services provided by his company
The TCU points out a conflict of interest in the consultant’s work, who, according to the supervisory body, “should be considered prevented from working at the FNDE or, at least, in certain processes in this authority, instead of being remunerated by the Treasury, to defend private interests.”
TCU determines cancellation of release of resources for ‘fake schools’
In the case of fake schools, in the TCU’s assessment, the release of resources without sufficient budget to the detriment of abandoned works is incompatible with the FNDE’s budgetary and financial capacity.
The court ordered the FNDE to annul the signing of terms of commitment for the construction, expansion and renovation of schools that have not been approved with a definitive project and that have no prospect of effective completion, suspending the release of public money for “fake schools”. .
Furthermore, the authority must adopt technical and objective criteria in defining which States and municipalities will benefit from the funds, “thus providing greater smoothness in the decision-making process for allocating resources and transparency in the direction of these resources”.
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