Paulo Pimenta, Lula’s minister, omitted house in noble area – 03/20/2023 – Power

Minister Paulo Pimenta, from Secom (Secretary of Social Communication of the Presidency of the Republic) of the Lula government, omitted from his declaration of assets delivered to the Electoral Justice the house where he lives in Brasília, acquired for R$ 1.6 million in 2013 (about of R$ 3 million in inflation-adjusted amounts).

The property is located in Lago Norte, an upscale neighborhood of the federal capital, and was not included in any equity relationship presented by the minister in the 2014, 2018 and 2022 elections. only R$ 192.8 thousand.

Today, houses close to the minister’s and of similar size are listed for more than R$5 million. The lot has 848 square meters and 441 square meters of built area, according to the deed of the property.

On the last 10th, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) and the President of the Chamber, Arthur Lira (PP-AL), attended a dinner at the minister’s house to discuss the impasse between the Chamber and the Senate regarding the resumption of the functioning of the commissions responsible for analyzing the MPs (provisional measures).

The minister claims that the house is his and his wife’s property and that it is duly declared to the Federal Revenue, in the income tax reports.

The Electoral Law (9.504/1997) requires all politicians who intend to run for office to submit an updated declaration of all their assets in the candidacy registration request. The information is published on the transparency pages of the TSE (Tribunal Superior Eleitoral) for consultation by any voter.

One of the objectives of the rule is to allow society to monitor and eventually identify signs of suspicious equity developments or conflicts of interest.

The asset declarations made to the Revenue Service and the Electoral Court, however, have different formats and objectives. Compliance with one does not exclude the obligation of the other.

The annual income tax report made to the tax authorities has tax purposes and its own rules, in addition to being confidential, that is, its information cannot be accessed by any citizen.

The declaration of assets to the Electoral Justice is public, and the politician must include the current list of assets, containing a simplified description and the value declared to the Revenue, without the need to include addresses or other detailed data.

This report is public and can be accessed on Divulgacand, the TSE page with information on candidacies and electoral accounts.

“The transparency of candidates’ declarations of assets is fundamental not only for the social control of possible signs of irregularities or conflicts of interest, but also for the very conscious formation of the voter vote, which must have the right to access information that it considers relevant to the formation of your vote”, says the executive director of Party Transparency, Marcelo Issa.

Paulo Pimenta is married in partial community property with historian Claudia Dutra, who at the time of the purchase of the house was an employee of the Ministry of Education. Her name is also on the deed to the property.

In the declaration of assets made to the TSE by Pimenta in 2022, in which he reported an equity of R$ 192.8 thousand, the only property was a parking space in Porto Alegre (RS).

At the time of the acquisition of the house, Pimenta was in his third consecutive term as a federal deputy. Before that, he was councilor and deputy mayor of Santa Maria (RS), as well as state deputy in Rio Grande do Sul.

In 2010, the last election before buying the house, Pimenta had declared to the TSE that he had assets of R$785.6 thousand, two properties in Rio Grande do Sul —one in the capital of Rio Grande do Sul and another in Santa Maria—, in addition to shares of a company called Ouro Negro Comercial.

The property in Santa Maria, worth R$ 194,600, was no longer declared as of 2014. According to the minister, it was sold for R$ 590,000, 36% of the value of the house in Brasília.

The apartment in Porto Alegre left Pimenta’s declaration only in 2022.

The Electoral Code provides penalties of fine or imprisonment for cases like this, but punishment is rarely applied. The maximum penalty is 5 years in prison.

“All information that is declared to public bodies, such as the TSE, has to be reliable and real. A false or incomplete declaration has to be investigated in the electoral and criminal sphere”, says the manager of the Anti-Corruption Knowledge Center of Transparência Internacional Brasil, William France.

“Brazil today has three systems for declaring assets for public agents: the Federal Revenue, with the Income Tax, a TCU system [Tribunal de Contas da União] and the Electoral Court. The only public, and which therefore allows some type of tracking or control, is the Electoral Justice.”

Pimenta says he followed PT guidance by declaring property only to the Revenue

Minister Paulo Pimenta stated that the property is registered in his name and that of his wife and that he followed the party’s guidelines when submitting his declarations of assets to the Electoral Justice.

“As this is the couple’s property in 2014, 2018, 2022, it was included in my wife’s statement, whose CPF is informed in my statement. This is the guidance of the Federal Revenue regulations”, he said.

Asked why the property was not declared to the Electoral Justice, Pimenta replied that he followed the guidelines of the PT Organization Secretariat. The party document with the instructions for registering the candidacy asks that the current declaration of assets be sent, which may be a copy of the income tax declaration.

“All reported information is monitored by the control bodies, including the TCU, which has access to all my data on assets and income,” he added.

The minister stated that the resources for the purchase of the house came from the sale of the property in Santa Maria and from loans, in addition to the couple’s own resources. Everything was declared in the Income Tax, he says. “Payments were made through bank transfers and checks.”

Regarding the loans, he states that two were made, in the payroll modality, at Banco do Brasil, both also declared to the Federal Revenue Service.