CGU determines that Weintraub be fired from Unifesp – 02/07/2024 – Education

The Official Gazette of the Union published this Wednesday (7) a decision by the CGU (Comptroller General of the Union) determining the dismissal of Abraham Weintraub, former Minister of Education in the Bolsonaro government, from the position he holds at Unifesp (Federal University of São Paulo).

Weintraub and his wife, Daniela Baumohl Weintraub, were the target of investigations after a complaint that they received a salary without having worked between the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023.

The dismissal penalty was based on the final report of the Disciplinary Process Committee to which he was submitted and the opinion of the CGU’s legal consultancy.

The decision also includes the impediment of the appointment, appointment or possession of the former minister in permanent positions or in positions of trust in the federal government for a period of eight years.

Weintraub is a professor of the accounting sciences course, at the university’s Osasco campus (in Greater SP).

His tenure at the Ministry of Education was marked by budget cuts and attacks on the country’s federal universities. He accused educational institutions of promoting “riot” and said they had marijuana plantations, without ever presenting evidence.

The former Bolsonarista, now a critic of the government in which he participated, spent 14 months in the ministry and was fired by Bolsonaro in June 2020, after insulting ministers of the STF (Supreme Federal Court).

After being fired, he took on a management position at the World Bank, in the United States, which guaranteed his leave from the university until October 2022.

According to Unifesp, after the date on which he was supposed to return to his teaching position, Weintraub requested a vacation, which was in effect until November 1, 2022. “The server did not attend the university in the last year. There is no record of his presence at Unifesp”, said the institution in a note released at the beginning of the investigations.

Despite not showing up for work, Weintraub received full salaries of around R$4,020 —information contained in the Transparency Portal of the Comptroller General of the Union—, totaling more than R$16,000 from December 2022 to March 2023 .

After reporting that he was being paid without working, Unifesp preventively suspended payment of salaries.

At the time of the suspension of salaries, the firm Hadano Tanaka Advogados, which represents Weintraub, said it had filed the first request for leave in December 2022. The request was denied because there was an internal ordinance that prevented leave to deal with personal matters due to of the pandemic.

The office says that in February 2023 it filed a new request, as the internal ordinance had a deadline of March. “The university only responded to the client’s lawyers in April, with a new denial, which generated strangeness, since the head of the course and its respective council accepted the request, however, the pro-rector and the rector were against it”, he said .

A Sheet requested the license application documents, but the office did not present them.

At the time, the defense also said that it had filed a lawsuit against the Unifesp rectory.

“A legal action was filed this week against the Unifesp rectory, which acts under ideological conduct and out of revenge for the former Minister of Education. Our client, his wife and his children, minors, have been suffering persecution and threats”, he says the note.

“Therefore, this office will continue to act to protect the client’s physical and mental integrity through appropriate administrative and judicial means.”