Weintraub and woman lose wages due to absences at Unifesp – 08/01/2023 – Education

Abraham Weintraub, former Minister of Education in the Bolsonaro government, and his wife, Daniela Baumohl Weintraub, are the target of investigations at Unifesp (Federal University of São Paulo) after a complaint that they received a salary without having worked in recent months.

Professor of the accounting sciences course, on the Osasco campus, Weintraub is living in the United States and did not attend the university last semester to teach. Still, he received a salary in December 2022 and January, February and March of this year.

Daniela Weintraub, a professor at the Department of Actuarial Sciences, should have returned to work at the end of November, when the term of a leave for family health care ended. She has not attended university since then, but has received salaries in the months of January and February. The teacher responds to an administrative process for abandonment of position.

In a note, Weintraub’s lawyer said he had requested, in December last year, a license for the server to deal with “private matters”. According to him, the request was denied by the university’s rectory “out of revenge against the former minister of education”.

Unifesp informed that the request was rejected, as this type of license is suspended at the university. According to the institution, an internal complaint against the server was registered on April 13 of this year, and steps are being taken to investigate the absences.

Weintraub’s 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 “shambles” and said that they had marijuana plantations, without ever having presented evidence.

Weintraub spent 14 months in the position of minister and was fired by Bolsonaro in June 2020 after generating intense wear on the government for insulting ministers of the STF (Federal Supreme Court). “For me, I would put all these bums in jail, starting with the STF”, said Weintraub at the time.

Professor at Unifesp since 2014, Weintraub already had disagreements with students and colleagues even before leaving the university to take up positions in the Bolsonaro government — first as Executive Secretary of the Civil House and later as Minister of Education.

After being fired, he took a management position at the World Bank, in the United States, which ensured he was away from the university until October last year.

According to Unifesp, after the date on which he was supposed to return to the position of professor, 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”, the institution said in a note.

Despite not showing up for work, Weintraub received full salaries of around R$ 4,020 – information that appears on the Transparency Portal of the Comptroller General of the Union –, totaling more than R$ 16 thousand from December to March this year.

After the complaint that he was being paid without working, Unifesp suspended, in a preventive way, the payment of wages for April and May.

In a note, the university says that it is taking steps to determine the absence of the server. “Eventual amount unduly received for non-provision of service causes the public agent to return to the treasury the corresponding amounts to be determined in the due administrative process”, he said.

The university informed that Daniela responds to an administrative disciplinary process of summary rite for unjustified absences and abandonment of position. “The university followed the institutional internal flows for the calculation of these absences, suspending the servant’s salary, whose pertinent disciplinary administrative process is ongoing.”

Also according to Unifesp, since 2019, Daniela requested and was granted three leave of absence. From September 2019 to April 2022, she obtained two “spouse escort” licenses. From September to November last year, she was licensed for family health treatment.

Since the termination of this last leave, she has not attended university. “The employee has an active position at the university, but she has not been showing up for work”, said Unifesp.

In a note, the Hadano Tanaka Advogados office, which represents Weintraub, said it had filed the first license application in December last year. The request was denied because there was an internal ordinance that prevented the removal to deal with personal matters due to the pandemic.

The office says that in February this year 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 negative, which caused strangeness, since the head of the course and its respective council accepted the request, however, the pro-rector and the rectory were against it”, he said. .

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

On March 27, Unifesp’s rectory published a new ordinance determining the suspension of license concessions to deal with private interests for another 18 months.

Although there are no records of Weintraub’s presence at the university, the official is listed as the professor responsible for the subject of Introduction to Economics that will be taught to students of accounting sciences in the next semester, which will begin this August.

Asked whether Weintraub would return from the United States to teach, the lawyer said he had filed a lawsuit against the Unifesp rectory —the lawsuit was only filed after questions from the Sheet.

“A lawsuit was filed this week against Unifesp’s rectory, which acts on ideological grounds and out of revenge against the former Minister of Education. Our client, his wife and children, who are 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 the appropriate administrative and judicial means.”