Brazil Aid: CGU sees BRL 3.9 billion in overpayments – 05/15/2023 – Market

The CGU (Controladoria Geral da União) identified R$ 3.89 billion in undue payments made by the Auxílio Brasil Program, created by former President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) to replace Bolsa Família, between January and October last year.

The calculated amount originates from two different failures found by the audit.

The first sought to find members of the program’s beneficiary family with income registered in government databases, such as the INSS (National Social Security Institute) payroll and the FGTS Payment and Social Security Information Guide (GFIP), among others

Approximately 468,000 families were found outside the Auxílio Brasil income profile, which received R$ 218 million per month in the analyzed period. This represents BRL 2.18 billion in total.

Of the total number of families, explained the CGU, “about 75% had members who received benefits on the INSS payroll, while about 17% of families had income registered in the GFIP in the previous month”.

Another problem encountered involves control failures in the process of continuous monthly monitoring of the program, which, according to the CGU, may “have generated undue payments to around 367,000 families, on average, per month, from January to October of 2022”.

In this case, it would be BRL 171 million per month, or BRL 1.71 billion between January and October last year.

“The verification of the per capita family income made by the MDS (Ministry of Social Development) considers only the income informed, in a self-declaratory way by the beneficiaries themselves, in the Cadastro Único for social programs of the federal government”, pointed out the CGU.

Thus, the body continued, “in view of the fragility of the information related to this Register, the controllership auditors advanced in the analysis and evaluated the family income per capita of the families from other sources of information”.

The audit also identified cases of child labor and death records, in addition to other complaints received by managers.

The analysis showed “failures in the process of monthly control of the management of benefits, an activity routinely performed by the MDS to assess the need for temporary or permanent interruptions in payment according to the situation observed in the family”, evaluated the CGU.

As causes for the problems, the CGU highlighted the interruption of CadÚnico registration qualification actions between 2020 and 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the non-use of income information registered in other government databases to assess eligibility for the program. .

The period analyzed by the CGU runs from the beginning of last year until the 2022 elections, but the CGU does not mention the electoral issue in its analysis.

The explosion of Auxílio Brasil beneficiaries in the pre-election period worried the transitional government after the election of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) last year.

As of the inauguration of the current president, the CGU began a work of reviewing several decisions taken by Bolsonaro. In addition to the problems in the assistance program, the agency identified the use of the public machine in elections based on the review of secrecy made during its management.

The CGU also analyzed the quality of CadÚnico and found a series of problems.

“Of the 91.8 million people registered, 5.5 million do not have the CPF informed in the registration, that is 6% of the total”, he pointed out.

“322 CPFs were also identified associated with two or more different names and 140 CPFs that are not included in the Federal Revenue of Brazil database. The audit also pointed out situations in which the same CPF appears in two or more different active families”, he continued .

The problem is, among others, the failure to update the registered people.

“In October 2022, there were families actively registered in the register since 2017 without updates having been made to their respective registers in the period. The norm provides for cadastral updating every two years”, said the control body.