Entity that charged per cistern has contracts worth BRL 10 million – 02/16/2023 – Power

An entity from Alagoas that forced beneficiaries of the Cisterns Program, in the semi-arid region of Minas Gerais, to pay for part of the works paid by the federal government executes public contracts of at least R$ 10.5 million in three states.

The undue charging of residents, who live in a vulnerable situation and live with the drought, was revealed in a report by Sheet.

The contract in which this situation occurred was signed by the consortium of municipalities Inframinas, in the north of Minas Gerais, appointed during the administration of Jair Bolsonaro (PL) to manage federal resources.

The locations are 1,500 km from Maceió, headquarters of the entity responsible for the works, Ceapa (Central das Associações de Agricultura Familiar).

In this contract, Ceapa, which is not for profit, received the payment of BRL 4.2 million, in April 2022, and BRL 3 million, on December 28. The association claims that there is no irregularity in its activities.

The hiring took place through a public notice in which entities accredited by the Ministry of Citizenship could participate. There are at least 151, 10 of them in Minas Gerais.

A Sheet contacted four entities from Minas Gerais, one of which is from Montes Claros —headquarters of the Inframinas consortium. None of them heard about the edict.

Nor are there open records on the Mais Brasil Platform, of the federal government, that other institutions have disputed the contract.

Ceapa also won a public notice published by the Association for Orientation to Cooperatives of the Northeast (Assocene) and is managing batch 1 of a federal agreement that provides for the implementation of cisterns in Maranhão.

Receipts issued by the Mais Brasil Platform show that the institution received BRL 1.6 million, in December 2021, and BRL 595.5 thousand, on January 25, 2022. Ceapa was the only competitor.

Last year, Ceapa also won two notices from the Consortium for the Development of the Ipanema Region (Condri), in Alagoas, as a result of agreements signed with the Ministry of Citizenship along the same lines as the Inframinas consortium.

One of the notices is for the implementation of cisterns in eight municipalities. Ceapa was contracted to carry out lot 2, whose value is R$ 5 million.

The second contract with Condri, worth R$ 2.5 million, involves the implementation of pedagogical gardens in schools and communities in 20 municipalities in Alagoas. Ceapa, once again, competed alone.

Adding up the amounts that have already been paid, Ceapa managed just over R$ 10.5 million in federal resources last year, not counting state funds for the implementation of cisterns.

Created in 1992, Ceapa is registered with the economic activity of “associative organizations linked to culture and art” and “unspecified” associative activities.

It is chaired by Genivaldo Vieira da Silva, a sertanejo with a history of militancy in family farming and in defense of agrarian reform. Between 1996 and 2013, the entity signed at least 12 agreements with the federal government, in amounts that, together, reach R$ 3.6 million.

The current financial director, Eliane Santos de Lima, received seven installments of emergency aid, of R$ 600, during the pandemic.

The entity’s secretary, Luiz Henrique da Silva, also received installments of R$ 600, R$ 300 and R$ 250 of the aid.

In February 2022, the entity changed its address. He left a simple house in the Bom Parto neighborhood, in Maceió, for a larger room in a commercial building on Avenida Fernandes Lima, in the Farol neighborhood, the main thoroughfare in the capital of Alagoas.

According to the minutes of the meeting, the change occurred due to the growth of the entity.

On the 3rd, the Ministry of Development and Social Assistance announced that it would investigate the application of resources in the Cisterns Program in the Bolsonaro administration.

OTHER SIDE

Ceapa denied having committed illegalities. The entity claims that it started building cisterns in 2013 because of the lack of technical assistance agreements in the state. Today, he says he has 25 people hired via MEI (Individual microentrepreneur).

On the social benefits received by members of the board, Ceapa reported that people in the positions of president, financial director and secretary are not effective. The others, who are part of the board, receive no salary, only allowance.

The change of address was due to local violence and proximity to neighborhoods that are at risk of soil subsidence. The informed change of economic activity corresponds to a “natural process of any legal entity that adapts to current fiscal and financial conditions”.

The Inframinas Consortium claims that it complied with all the requirements of current legislation for the publication of the public notice, that only the contracted entity expressed interest and that the public notice was not published on the consortium’s website because the page is under construction.

The Ministry of Regional Integration stated that Ceapa acted irregularly by charging residents part of the costs of cisterns in Minas and that the entity will be suspended and may be disqualified.

The current management also attributed the disbursement of resources to the previous government, even in the face of the finding of irregular collection last year.

Ronaldo Vieira Bento, minister in the Bolsonaro administration, said that the ministry made an assessment of the contracts involving the Cisterns Program and that the report pointed out irregularities only in contracts signed in previous governments.

The report was produced in partnership with Google from collections of documents published in the Pinpoint tool