By Guilherme Grandi
At least eight Brazilian federal state-owned companies and 12 pension funds have been targets of anti-corruption police operations over the past two decades.
Fears that stories like this would be repeated gained strength with the maneuver of the Chamber of Deputies to loosen the State-owned Law and facilitate the appointment of politicians to these companies on the eve of the inauguration of president-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT).
The most notorious cases are the monthly allowance, which became public in Lula da Silva’s first term, and the “petrolão”, revealed by Operation Lava Jato from the last year of Dilma Rousseff’s (PT) term.
The monthly allowance was revealed in 2005 by former deputy Roberto Jefferson (PTB) after one of his sponsors at the Correios (Post Office) was caught receiving bribes.
Cornered by allegations that he ran a bribe collection scheme at the state-owned company, Jefferson denounced that the Lula government paid an allowance to federal deputies so that they would vote in favor of projects of interest to the Planalto.
Although the PT was pointed out as the main beneficiary, the monthly allowance had the participation of other parties, such as the PTB, PSB, PP and PL.
Nine years later, a corruption scandal at Petrobras came into the spotlight. Investigations into the oil tank unraveled a scheme of fraudulent contracts and payment of bribes to finance parties and politicians allied with the government, in addition to a cartel formed by large contractors in the country.
Operation Lava Jato reached, in addition to PT leaders, parliamentarians from other parties, such as the MDB, PP, PSDB, PSB and DEM (which in 2022 merged with the PSL and formed União Brasil).
In addition to Correios and Petrobras, other state-owned companies were involved in one way or another in scandals, such as the Instituto de Resseguros do Brasil (IRB, later privatized), Transpetro (a subsidiary of Petrobras), Furnas and Eletronuclear (linked to Eletrobras), Caixa, and Banco do Brasil (Bank of Brazil).
In parallel, pension funds (closed supplementary pension) of state-owned companies were involved in allegations of fraud, party rigging and mismanagement, being the subject of investigations within the CPMI of Correios in 2006 and a specific CPI in the Chamber of Deputies in 2015 and 2016.
The first, in the scope of calculating the monthly allowance, involved funds Prece (CEDAE), Nucleos (Eletronuclear), Real Grandeza (Furnas and Eletronuclear), Geap (30 public bodies including ministries, federal universities, foundations and institutes), Serpros (Serpro ), Portus (Companhia Docas), Refer (Rede Ferroviária Federal S/A), Postalis (Post Office), Centrus (Central Bank), Petros (Petrobras), Funcef (Caixa) and Previ (Bank of Brazil).
In the second, an evolution of the CPMI of Correios, it was found that resources from the funds were used to make investments in infrastructure of interest to the government possible and also to help in the expansion of the so-called “national champions”. Only three of these funds – Petros, Funcef and Postalis – had losses estimated at R$56 billion.
Approved in 2016, after the removal of Dilma from the Presidency of the Republic, the State-owned Law sought to professionalize management and shield state-controlled companies and also regulatory agencies from party-political interference.
One of its main articles prohibits the appointment of politicians who have participated in the decision-making structure of parties or electoral campaigns in the previous 36 months, a period that the deputies decided to reduce to just 30 days.
This change still depends on Senate approval – which should be in 2023 – and presidential sanction to take effect.
The legislation also obliges that the senior management positions of the state-owned companies be occupied by people with notorious knowledge of the function and unblemished reputation, which gives more professionalism to the management of the companies.
“The law prevents state-owned companies from being used, for example, as a job hanger, or from investing in bad projects that are used to divert resources. It is more difficult to pressure a director who has a reputation to uphold than a politician who has been placed there”, says Felipe Pontes, operational director of consultancy Economatica.
For Senator Oriovisto Guimarães (PR), leader of Podemos in the Senate and who has been criticizing the change in the law, permission to nominate politicians will serve to “find jobs for about 200 parliamentarians who were not elected”, as he said in an interview. to GloboNews.
For Professor Jefferson Oliveira Goulart, doctor in political science from the University of São Paulo (USP), the legislation caused an excessive hardening in the nominations to state companies. “It is obvious that this character [appointed by the president to preside over a state-owned company] cannot be just anyone. But it is necessary to be programmatically in tune with the ideas that enshrined and legitimized the government, and that it has the technical knowledge to deal with the issues and problems of these companies. I don’t think we should personify one or the other, but rather have controls and mechanisms of ‘accountability’, of accountability of public companies”, he evaluates, noting that cases of corruption in state-owned companies involved several parties and also career civil servants.
For Goulart, such practices stem from a weakness in the mechanisms for controlling and fighting corruption. “The Brazilian State is very susceptible to private interests, an endemic patrimonialist culture. And this, evidently, stimulates the action of private agents in the sense of illegally capturing the resources that these large companies operate”, he adds.
CORREIOS AND PETROBRAS: FROM “CROWN JEWELS” TO NEAR BANKRUPTCY
The market’s concern with the change in the State-Owned Companies Law is not for nothing. Until the last year of the Dilma government, in 2016, companies like Correios and Petrobras faced financial difficulties.
In the postal company, for example, the Comptroller General of the Union (CGU) pointed out a reduction of approximately 90% in shareholders’ equity between 2011 and 2016 (see the full report here). In the following year, gross profit plummeted by approximately 40%, with a drop in short and long-term financial investments from R$2 billion to R$990 million.
“From 2011 to 2016, the company showed increasing degradation in its ability to pay in the long term, increased indebtedness and dependence on third-party capital, and mainly, reduced profitability, with the generation of increasing losses from the fiscal year 2013”, said the CGU.
Part of this growing degradation was due to labor obligations for salary increases and layoffs that, towards the end of the period, demanded an agreement with the Superior Labor Court (TST) to stem the bleeding of management problems.
In 2017, Correios presented a recovery plan with 40 strategic initiatives and 15 indicators and targets to reverse the accounts by 2022. From that year, the state-owned company reversed the successive losses that reached R$3.9 billion between 2013 and 2016, and registered net results that totaled 6.160 billion until 2021 – the year in which profit reached a record R$3.7 billion.
The same happened with Petrobras, which managed to rebalance its accounts after the State-owned Law, with an asset sale program and a pricing policy independent of the will of the government in question.
In 2014, when the investigation came to light, Petrobras recorded its first negative result since 1991, with a loss of R$21.5 billion. There were four consecutive years of losses until, in 2018, the state-owned company returned to record profits – R$25.7 billion.
Since then, the oil company has accumulated gains of BRL 40.1 billion in 2019, R$7.1 billion in 2020 – a decline linked to the drop in global demand for fuels due to the Covid-19 pandemic – and R$106,6 billion in 2021.
“Since the law was created, Petrobras has had record profits, reduced its debt – it became one of the most indebted companies in the world –, divested of assets that were not good, and reduced its debt. This is clearly one of the consequences of the creation of the State-Owned Companies Law”, says Anand Kishore, investment fund manager at Daycoval Asset.
Among the company’s divestments are the withdrawal of completing the works on the Petrochemical Complex of Rio de Janeiro (Comperj), started in 2008 and never completed after spending R$47 billion, in addition to other works that never got off the ground, such as the Premium 1 and 2 refineries in Maranhão and Ceará, respectively, which generated losses of R$2.7 billion.
Transpetro, a subsidiary of Petrobras, left the company’s divestment radar. The state-owned company was the target of one of the phases of Operation Lava Jato, in 2020, on suspicion of corruption in operations for the purchase and sale of ships in 2008. Another phase of Lava Jato discovered a corruption scheme that raised R$11.9 million in tuition fees in 2010.
CAIXA AND BANCO DO BRASIL WERE ALSO INVOLVED IN SCANDALS
In 2018, four vice-presidents of Caixa were removed by then-president Michel Temer (MDB) after a recommendation from the Central Bank and the Federal Public Ministry (MPF), some of them in connection with corruption cases discovered during Lava Jato.
Bribe payment and money laundering schemes involving bank directors and deputies, and the manipulation of investments by pension funds Funcef and Petros in overvalued assets were discovered.
In mid-2014, then-president Dilma Rousseff appointed PTB’s first treasurer, Luiz Rondon, as the bank’s corporate vice-president, in an agreement for the party’s support for his re-election. However, Rondon had already been the target of investigations by the monthly allowance in 2005, when he occupied the directorate of management, planning and environment at Eletronuclear, a subsidiary of Eletrobras that operated the nuclear power plants in Angra dos Reis (RJ).
In addition to Caixa, other politicians held more positions in by state support agreements for the PT, such as Benito Gama, former president of the PTB and appointed vice-president of the government of Banco do Brasil during the first Dilma administration. And former deputy Geddel Vieira Lima (MDB) in the corporate and legal entity vice-presidency of Caixa.
After the approval of the State-owned Law, which removed politicians linked to the vice-presidencies, Caixa had a leap in profits, from R$4.1 billion in 2016 to R$17.3 billion in 2021.
Banco do Brasil was also used to divert funds from advertising contracts with the payment of a 2% “toll” that was sent to the PT, as denounced businessman Marcos Valério during the monthly investigations. According to him, regarded as the “operator” of the scheme, transfers exceeded R$400 million, and the money was used to pay parliamentarians of the National Congress between 2003 and 2005.
At the same time, a bribe payment scheme involving the Instituto de Resseguros do Brasil (IRB) was discovered, with a loss of R$2.2 million and the departure of the then director, Lídio Duarte, linked to former deputy Roberto Jefferson (PTB).
In 2020, Aldemir Bendine, former president of Banco do Brasil and Petrobras in the PT governments, was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for the crime of passive corruption in action related to Operation Lava Jato. According to the complaint, he would have received R$3 million from Odebrecht, in 2015, to protect the contractor in Petrobras contracts.
ELETRONUCLEAR AND FURNAS WERE USED TO EMBEZZLE MONEY
The two state-owned companies linked to energy generation were cited during the investigations into the monthly allowance and the oil bill as drains of money to fill the coffers of the PT and allied parties, and to pay deputies.
In one of the phases of Lava Jato, for example, the former Minister of Mines and Energy between 2005 and 2007, Silas Rondeau, was arrested for fraud at Eletronuclear. In another operation, carried out in 2015, the former president of the state company, the reserve admiral Othon Luiz Pinheiro da Silva, was indicted by the Federal Police on suspicion of receiving bribes in the construction of the Angra 3 power plant – investigators pointed out, at the time, a amount that could reach R$30 million.
In 2015, then-prosecutor Carlos Fernando dos Santos Lima, from the Federal Public Ministry, stated that both Eletronuclear and Petrobras were linked to the corruption schemes of the monthly allowance and the petrolão since the Lula government, from the Civil House. At the time, José Dirceu, then minister of the portfolio, became a defendant for allegedly having received R$11.8 million in contracts signed by Engevix Engenharia for works by the state-owned oil company.
Another subsidiary of Eletrobras, Furnas Centrais Elétricas, was also the target of investigations for a scheme similar to the monthly allowance in mid-2006. from the state.
The case became known as the “Furnas list” and involved politicians allegedly benefiting from money diverted from the state-owned company headquartered in Rio. The scheme reproduced that practiced in the monthly allowance, according to the attorney’s office. Corruption in Furnas was cited in the award-winning delations of money changer Alberto Youssef and lobbyist Fernando Moura, in Lava Jato. Both point to the then Senator Aécio Neves (PSDB-MG) as the beneficiary of the deviations, who denied the accusations.
With information from Gazeta do Povo