End of Petrobras sponsorship has no relation to PT, unlike what video suggests

Video that deals with Petrobras sponsorship of F1 drivers is misleading. Although the oil company sponsored the McLaren team, the contract suspended by President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) had been signed during the government of Michel Temer (MDB) in 2018, and not during the PT administration.

In addition, as verified by Projeto Comprova, contrary to what the author of the post insinuates, there are no indications of irregularities in the negotiation, which dealt with the exposure of the Petrobras brand and the company’s technology development in partnership with the F1 team.

A supporter of Bolsonaro, the author of the video claims that the president discovered the financial contribution from Petrobras and that the “petezada made a scream”, that is, the members of the PT would have been outraged by the revelation of the alleged corruption.

The value of the contract was not officially informed, but at the time of the breakup, vehicles reported that it would be around R$ 870 million. This amount would correspond to a five-year contract, between 2018 and 2022. Petrobras does not disclose amounts due to the confidentiality clause of the contract.

The values ​​were not just for “stamping Brazilian flags” on the helmets of the two McLaren drivers, as the author of the video quotes. In addition to helmets, overalls and the team’s cars, the value involved technology development and research.

McLaren itself published a statement when the contract was terminated saying that the partnership yielded “technological advances in fuels and lubricants and identified opportunities for future collaborations in the commercial, technological and social responsibility areas between the two companies”.

The PT is the party of ex-president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, also in the race for the presidency, and Bolsonaro’s main opponent, appearing, at the moment, as a leader in the electoral polls.

In the same post, the author mentions that Bolsonaro also discovered a monthly expense of R$ 1 million to store a Funai plane. Last year, the agency auctioned the six aircraft it still owned, and with which it had expenses for parking, hangaring [que inclui serviços como estacionamento, armazenamento, limpeza, abastecimento de energia da aeronave quando necessário, e orientação de pouso e decolagem] and rates of the places where they were kept.

In July 2019, when the condition of the planes was identified, the annual rental cost was BRL 700,000 for all aircraft, not just one. In a note, Funai reported that “the six aircraft were sold for a total of R$629,500, which was collected from the National Treasury”, but did not reveal the expenses to maintain them during the period in which they were stopped.

The recording also brings another claim: the author claims that the national president of the PT, Gleisi Hoffmann, met with STF minister Edson Fachin to censor social networks, an allegation that lacks context. The party’s legal team met in May this year with the magistrate, who at the time held the presidency of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), to discuss ways to stop the spread of misinformation and so-called fake news, particularly in elections. So, the proposal would be to prevent the circulation of what is misleading and false, not all internet content as is insinuated in the investigated content.

For Comprova, misleading is content taken from the original context and used in another so that its meaning is altered; that uses inaccurate data or that leads to an interpretation different from the author’s intention; content that confuses, with or without the deliberate intent to cause harm.

Scope of publication

As of 1:30 pm on September 1, there were more than 113,000 views and 11,000 likes. The post also received 1,369 comments and was shared 2,499 times.

what does the author say

The owner of the post was contacted by Kwai, but did not return until the end of the report.

How do we check

The first step was to search for the keywords that appeared in the investigated video. On Google, the team searched for “Petrobras” + “Formula One” and the query returned articles in which, among other information, the termination of the oil company’s contract with McLaren was mentioned.

With the name of the sponsored team, new research was carried out and the team identified that content of disinformation about this Petrobras contract had already been denied previously. In 2019, the Lupa agency pointed out that it was false that the contract was broken with McLaren to direct resources to education.

In the same year, UOL revealed that the content of a tweet by Bolsonaro, in which the president stated that the amount paid by Petrobras was all in advertising with the team, was not true. At the end of last year, Estadão Verifies treated as a rumor the allegation made two years earlier about the destination of the funds for the suspended sponsorship.

The report also Googled the National Foundation for the Indian’s expenditure on aircraft, using the terms “Funai” + “airplanes” + “abandonment”. Journalistic articles address the problem (Poder 360, Exame, Estadão, Agência Brasil), but there is no information on spending R$ 1 million per month to store just one plane, as alleged by the author of the video. This value was the estimated revenue from the aircraft auction.

Also in research, the report sought content that related Gleisi Hoffmann, Edson Fachin and social networks. The consultation returned articles about the PT’s initiative to contain the circulation of disinformation.

The project also sent emails to Petrobras and Funai and found a statement on the matter on the McLaren website.

The contract and termination

Contrary to what was insinuated in the video, the contract signed between Petrobras and F1 teams, and then broken by Bolsonaro, did not take place during PT’s management. According to the oil company’s advice, the partnership with McLaren began in February 2018. In that year, Michel Temer (MDB) was in the presidency of the Republic.

When the breakup took place, reports that addressed the matter pointed out that the value, contracted in sterling, reached, at the time, R$ 872 million, according to a document that dealt with the first nine months of Bolsonaro’s administration.

The end of the contract, according to the company’s communication, took place in November 2019, but Petrobras does not reveal amounts due to the confidentiality clause. At the time the partnership ended, McLaren released a statement informing about the termination of the contract with Petrobras. Also without detailing values, the motorsport team states that “Petrobras and McLaren Racing have concluded their technical and sponsorship agreement by mutual consent.”

From the statement, it is possible to observe that the value, although not disclosed, was not only intended for Petrobras’ publicity. “The partnership produced clear technological advances in fuels and lubricants and identified opportunities for future collaborations in the commercial, technological and social responsibility areas between the two companies.”

The statement also cites Roberto Castello Branco, then president of Petrobras: “The project allowed Petrobras to develop high-tech gasoline and lubricants through research with new raw materials and tests carried out under extreme conditions. The technological development will be applied to lubricant products and fuels”.

Sponsorships from oil companies are quite common in the category. Petronas, the Malaysian state oil company, has sponsored the Mercedes AMG team for a few years, as has Shell, the British fuel company, sponsor of Ferrari. In addition to mere sponsorship stamping the brands on cars, overalls and helmets, contracts usually involve development research, which generates returns for both parties. Petrobras itself has today at its pumps a gasoline called Petrobras Podium. The fuel was developed during a previous passage of the Brazilian state-owned company in the automobile category, in 2002, when it sponsored another team, Williams.

Auction

In July 2019, according to a report by Poder360, Bolsonaro posted a video on his Instagram account by former minister Damares Alves in which he showed the situation of abandonment of a hangar at Brasília International Airport. The aircraft showed signs of scrapping.

Also according to the report, with information attributed to the former minister, the rent paid to keep the planes parked was R$ 700,000 per year and, with late rents, the cost reached R$ 3 million, according to Estadão in era. According to Damares’ statements, endorsed by Bolsonaro, there was no monthly expenditure of R$ 1 million with just one aircraft, as suggested in the video investigated here.

The report reached out to Funai’s communication team, who explained that, in 2021, almost two years after Damares’ video, the institution still had six of the aircraft in question. In “mid-2021”, said Funai, the auction of the “six aircraft that were part of the body’s assets and that had been inoperative for more than a decade” was held.

According to the foundation, they were manufactured between 1971 and 1984 and were considered unrecoverable. The agency did not detail values, limiting itself to stating that “the planes entailed expenses related to their guard and stay”. Funai added that the auctions took place in May and June 2021, in the states of Rio de Janeiro, Goiás, Pará and the Federal District.

Also according to the note, “the action represented savings to the public coffers of expenses with parking services, hangarage and permanence fees in the locations where they were located. and minimizing risks of poor conservation. The six aircraft were sold for a total of R$ 629,500, which was paid to the National Treasury”.

PT and TSE meeting

The author of the video also makes reference to Gleisi Hoffmann, claiming that the PT president would have met with minister Edson Fachin to censor social networks.

In fact, social networks were on the agenda of a meeting, on May 20, 2022, between the party and the magistrate, when he was still in the presidency of the TSE, but the focus was not censorship, whose meaning is “to prohibit public circulation of information”, in a more summarized definition. The purpose of the meeting was to seek ways to contain the dissemination of false and misleading content, therefore, disinformation.

In February, the TSE had already formalized a partnership with eight platforms – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, Kwai, WhatsApp and Google – to combat misinformation about this year’s electoral process. The following month, Telegram also joined the program and formalized the partnership in May. Even with the engagement of the platforms, the TSE, on the other hand, created an alert system for cases of disinformation related to the elections.

Why do we investigate?

Comprova investigates suspicious content that went viral on social media about the pandemic, public policies of the federal government and presidential elections. The post cites the PT, the party of one of the presidential candidates, attributing financial expenses that were not assumed in the management of the party and insinuating that sports sponsorship would be an act of corruption. Disinformation content like this affects the democratic process because it distorts the understanding of reality. The population has the right to know the truth and base their choices on reliable information.