About 70% of cases of misappropriation occur in the areas of Education and Health, says director of the AGU

About 70% of cases of misappropriation occur in the areas of Education and Health, says director of the AGU

BRASÍLIA - Education and Health, high-budget areas and many small-value transfers, are the main culprits in the diversion of public money in Brazil. This is what informs the director of the Department of Heritage and Probity of the General Law of the Union (AGU), André Luiz de Almeida Mendonça. He says he has "no doubt in saying that about 60 to 70% (of deviations) refers to this type of area".

In the department he runs, there are 110 people working. Since 2009, when the AGU started to have a more systematic work of recovering public money diverted, 8% of the questioned amounts were returned to the coffers of the Union. Last week, the OK coffers returned R $ 54.9 million, of former senator Luiz Estevão (PMDB-DF). The amount is part of the money diverted from the construction of the Regional Labor Court (TRT) of São Paulo, in the scandal that became known as the Lalau Case.

Mendonça himself acknowledges that much remains to be recovered, but believes that there has been progress in the last two years. He also advocates faster justice, as well as other actions to reduce the repayment term. He recalls that, in addition to all the steps of verification since the detection of irregularities by the control organs, the process can take about 17 years.


The GLOBE: Today which areas have the most deviations?

Mendonça: Without doubt the area of ​​Education and public health. I add to these two areas basic sanitation, which in some ways is also a public health area.

The GLOBE: Are these the most affected areas because they have the largest budget?

Mendonça: The biggest budget issue logically influences, but are areas in which you pulverize money. When you treat for example a great work, of course several people will be around it. When you pulverize public money, you make it difficult to oversee and even perceive that you have to scrutinize. So in the small works, in the small passages, is that we find the largest flow of cases. This does not mean that a large case sometimes can not represent, in monetary quantity, several small irregularities. But about 60% of defendants in our cases are mayors and former mayors. Then you see this spray, which I mean, in small cases, on small transfers.


The GLOBE: Is there an estimate of how much the deviations in these areas represent in total deviations?

Mendonça: Today, I still can not give you these numbers. We are working so that in the next two years we can identify by ministry. We have made a number of changes to the recall system so that we have more concrete data. Now, I have no doubt in saying that about 60 to 70% refers to this type of area.

THE GLOBE: How much has already been returned to the Union coffers of public funds that had been diverted by corruption?

Mendonça: From 2004 to here, it is data that we have, gives R $ 1.44 billion.

The GLOBE: Does this correspond to how much of the total deviated?



Mendonça: We do not have that estimate. We do not yet have the system that allows us to do this kind of work, if not from 2009, when we started with the work of this specific group (the Department of Assets and Probity of AGU). And then we started to have control of the actions we were proposing. The control that we have of 2004 is because it was already done there through the Union collection guides. This allowed us a control not yet precise, but a control close to reality.

The GLOBE: From this time when there is better control, from 2009 to here, is it possible to say how much has been recovered?

Mendonça: Around 8%. Our target until 2016 is to reach something around 25%. We are adopting some structural measures and the issue of information traffic, so that we can achieve an improvement in recovery rates.

GLOBO: Is it possible to have this improvement without changes in the courts and in the processing of resources?

Mendonça: For us to improve, they must be structural. They do not depend on an area or an institution. They depend on reducing the time between the practice of irregularity and the effective recovery. Today, on average, between the practice of irregularity and the calculation, we can talk roughly there about five years. So the person diverted money today, I found out and I was able to find out what she actually diverted: about five years. As a result, the cases are usually referred to the Union Court of Accounts (TCU), which takes about five years. And then, we have the lawsuit filing, which takes more than five years until you have a conclusion. You can put 17 years there.

GLOBO: What do you need to do to improve this scenario?

Mendonça: It is to reduce these three stages. How is it reduced? It is you perfecting the control system. In addition, the TCU is taking work to reduce the time it takes to judge the processes. And we need to have a faster Justice too. Besides, what are we doing? The Federal Comptroller's Office (CGU), in the cases where the fraud is conspicuous, in addition to forwarding the information to the TCU, it is sent to us, so that we can already file preventive judicial measures, requesting blockade of assets, filing actions of improbity when It is the case. And the third path, the one more focused on the AGU, is to have a more proactive action, a series of measures so that in a period of five years we can recover more values.

The GLOBE: An 8% recovery rate means that 92% have not yet been recovered ...

Mendonça: That's a lot.

The GLOBE: Does this give you a sense of frustration, that there is a lot of impunity?

Mendonça: It is logical that we have much to do, it is logical that we still have much to achieve so that we can say that in Brazil there is no impunity. If you pick punctual cases, you will see that there is no impunity. But if you put this into a more comprehensive analysis, there is still impunity in Brazil. There is no denying it. What depends on us, institutions and society? It is working day by day so that this index decreases every year. Now, for this, institutions are not enough. It is necessary to have a strengthening of the press, which plays a fundamental role in this process of investigative work that the press makes of denunciation, accompanying the public managers. And more than that, we need to improve every day in the exercise of citizenship. Not only in the choice of our representatives. Where are corruption rates lower? In countries where the citizen has incorporated within himself the sense of co-responsibility in the monitoring of public managers.

GLOBO: Can it be said that today the Brazilian population is conniving with corruption?



Mendonça: We can not say she's conniving. We can say that it is co-responsible for the monitoring of public managers. The first prosecutor of the public thing is the citizen. If every citizen has this awareness, the public manager will have another reflective consciousness of this, which is that he is being watched everywhere and at all times. This is a process of maturing Brazilian democracy. It's a still young democracy. Our hope is that in the next ten, twenty years, Brazil will indeed have a participatory democracy.

THE GLOBE: Regarding the scandal involving the Ministry of Transport, does the AGU already have measures to recover possible deviations?

Mendonça: This recent case of the Ministry of Transport is a case that is still under investigation by the control bodies, more precisely CGU and Federal Police. After the calculations it is that they send us their conclusions. The AGU is not an oversight body. She does not have that power. It will be the legal arm of the tax authorities. Once the irregularity is detected, they, concluding by the irregularity, forward the cases to us to be able to propose the actions.