Fies fraud: Federal Police and CGU carry out an operation – 04/12/2023 – Education

The Federal Police and the CGU (Comptroller General of the Union) carried out this Wednesday (12) an operation against alleged fraud in payments to higher education institutions with Fies (Student Financing) resources.

According to the PF, there are 20 search and seizure warrants in the Federal District and in seven other states: Goiás, Mato Groso, Sergipe, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais and Bahia. The authorities issued an order to block assets worth R$21.3 million.

So far, the involvement of at least 20 institutions located in different states has been identified. The operation was baptized as Falsa Tutela, in allusion to illicit documents registered in the Fies system to enable payments.

In April 2021, the Sheet showed that employees of the FNDE (National Fund for the Development of Education) discovered alterations in this system to release irregular payments, at the time, in 22 sponsoring companies, which, in turn, controlled 34 colleges. Random or expired injunctions were included in the system to authorize transfers to universities that did not have negative certificates of tax debts.

At Fies, the student takes out the loan and the government pays the monthly fees at private institutions. These payments are made with treasury bonds, which can be repurchased by the government as long as they have negative debt certificates.

Companies without these certificates have been able to receive resources based on court decisions. The illegal maneuver, however, deceived the system by registering invalid documents.

In this way, educational groups irregularly received resources through repurchases of Treasury bonds, used for remuneration in the program.

The PF and the CGU were able to confirm the participation of then FNDE employees who, “in return for receiving undue advantages”, registered false injunctions in favor of institutions. In one of the cases, an outsourced FNDE employee improperly changed her own financing process and that of her partner.

There were also indications of action by law firms specialized in educational law in negotiations between companies and these employees, such as the Sheet had already pointed out in 2021.

The Union spent, from 2014 to 2020, BRL 60 billion on repurchases of Fies bonds. More than 500 maintainers receive cash from buybacks on a monthly basis.

A Sheet showed in 2021 that the federal government, under the management of Jair Bolsonaro (PL), maintained payments to companies whose operations were already under suspicion and also did not make improvements to the system to prevent fraud.