The TCU (Union Court of Auditors) decided, this Wednesday (17), to comply with a request from the Public Ministry of the agency to open an investigation into the works carried out in the mansion of former Caixa Econômica president Pedro Guimarães paid by the bank, in Brasilia.
The TCU’s decision was based on a report published by Sheet in July, which showed that the institution paid for the installation of light poles in the garden of a house rented by the then president of the institution.
The court ministers unanimously agreed with the court technicians, who assessed that the matter falls within the competence of the TCU.
They justified that the complaint deals with expenses made by a federal public company, linked to a responsible subject to its jurisdiction (managers of Caixa Econômica Federal).
The former employee, who was one of the closest names to President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) in the government, left office in June after being denounced for sexual harassment by at least five Caixa employees.
Such as Sheet showed, the interventions at the house in Guimarães were carried out in 2020 by four employees of a company that has contracts with the public bank to carry out maintenance services in its buildings and branches.
The decision was a response to a representation by the deputy attorney general of the Public Ministry at the TCU, Lucas Furtado. He stated that the expenses deserved to be investigated, as “they reveal a practice incompatible with the new demands of society, whose moral parameters must also be taken into account”.
Furtado considered that the execution of the works may have occurred to meet a very personal and private interest, with offense to the principles of morality, impersonality and legality and with a deviation of purpose.
The TCU considered that the matter is “accompanied by sufficient evidence concerning irregularity or illegality”.
In addition, he pointed out that there is public interest in dealing with the alleged irregularity/illegality, “in view of the possible realization of irregular expenses within the scope of Caixa Econômica Federal”.
“In this way, the representation can be known, for the purpose of proving its origin”, justified the Department of External Control of the National Financial System of the agency.
The former employee’s lawyer, criminalist José Luis Oliveira Lima, told the report at the time that the works were authorized by the security sector after alleged threats received by the bank’s former president.
Caixa stated that they would be related to the security of the then president and are provided for in internal rules.
The court considered that, “despite the low risk (expenditure already consummated, with possible damage in an amount lower than the minimum limit for the establishment of special accounting, of R$ 50 thousand), the relevance of the reported fact justifies the need to act directly from the court in the specific case”.
The ministers, however, attached the decision to another open process on the same topic, at the request of parliamentarians, where the investigation must proceed.
The report of Sheet also had access to a conversation via a messaging application in which the then executive director of Logistics and Security at Caixa, Simone Benevides de Pinho Lima, authorizes the displacement of EMIBM employees to carry out work at the house in Guimarães.
Sought at the time, Benevides said that everything happened “within the legal process” and for “security” reasons. “It was at the time of the threat of emergency aid, of the forgers, who published the threat on the internet.”
At the same time of the works, the Federal Police opened an investigation to investigate a hacker attack on the president after the bank strengthened security measures to avoid scams in the payment of emergency aid. One person was arrested in September as part of the investigation.
The house was rented by Guimarães after the executive left an apartment held by the bank in a luxury hotel in Brasília.
The residence is on the edge of Lake Paranoá, in the most valued region of the city, and has a soccer field. The garden whose lighting was paid for by Caixa extends to the shores of the lake.
EMIBM has had contracts for engineering services with Caixa for about 25 years, obtained through public tenders.
The last contract, from June 2020, has an estimated value of BRL 16.3 million. Of this total, R$ 4.9 million has already been executed.
Guimarães was even considered as Guedes’s replacement in moments of crisis in his godfather’s portfolio in the government. He approached the president and his family for having a worldview similar to that of the Bolsonaro family.
This became clear, for example, when the STF (Federal Supreme Court) ordered the government to release the video of the ministerial meeting in which former minister Sergio Moro claimed that Bolsonaro’s interference in the Federal Police would be proven.
At the meeting, which took place at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, Guimarães criticized social isolation, which was recommended by the consensus of the Brazilian and world scientific community. He even put himself in the dispute for the vice seat on Bolsonaro’s ticket.
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