A state-owned company controlled by high-ranking Navy officers promoted four directors’ drivers to assistants, a position of trust, which raised individual salaries from R$3,400 to R$18.6 thousand. The difference was 447%.
The maneuver, led by the current president of Nuclep (Nuclebrás Equipamentos Pesados), was considered illegal by the CGU (General Comptroller of the Union), which indicated a loss of R$ 1.4 million to the public coffers.
Two CGU audit reports recommended that responsibility for promotions be investigated. One of the documents even proposed “due compensation” to Nuclep, a state-owned company dependent on the Union for the payment of employees’ salaries.
The case ended up being filed in an internal investigation, without pointing out guilt or intent on the part of the directors of the state-owned company who promoted their drivers. There was also no reimbursement to the treasury. Drivers lost their positions of trust.
A meeting of Nuclep’s executive board on August 3, 2016 approved the offer of positions of trust to drivers. Two had completed elementary school, and two had completed high school.
Rear Admiral Carlos Henrique Silva Seixas and Vice Admiral Liberal Enio Zanelatto were at the meeting. Seixas was managing director, and today he is president of Nuclep. Zanelatto was the industrial director of the state-owned company. Today, he is industrial director of the Navy.
“The administrative director confirmed the proposal presented, expressing himself in favor of the implementation”, records the minutes of the meeting. The proposal was unanimously approved.
The loss to public coffers in 2016 and 2017 was BRL 1.4 million, according to the CGU’s audit completed in July 2018. The state-owned company also failed to reduce BRL 294 thousand in overtime, according to the audit.
The company confirmed to CGU that the four drivers continued to act as directors’ drivers, but that they combined the function with others, inherent to the position of assistant.
To try to prove this accumulation, a certificate from a director of the Rio Navy Arsenal, dated June 12, 2018, was even presented to the CGU in an attempt to prove the role of a driver as an assistant. He would have participated in a working meeting in the Navy unit, with the president of Nuclep.
The explanation did not convince the auditors, who maintained the indication of illegality and the recommendations for the practice to cease to exist.
Minister of Mines and Energy in the Jair Bolsonaro government, retired squadron admiral Bento Albuquerque was a member of Nuclep’s Board of Directors when the CGU completed its audit of directors’ drivers.
He started as a director in December 2016, four months after the act of the executive board.
The minutes of board meetings available on the Nuclep website do not record discussions and deliberations regarding this specific issue of driver promotion. After being just a board member, Albuquerque chaired the board from May 2019 to May 2020.
“Acts of appointment for positions and functions were the responsibility of the executive board, with no follow-up or approval by the council,” stated the MME (Ministry of Mines and Energy), in a note.
According to the MME, which responded to inquiries regarding Nuclep, a company linked to the folder, an investigation procedure was opened by the state’s internal affairs department, based on the recommendation of the CGU. This was on September 3, 2018.
Only on December 6, 2018 was a CGU career auditor appointed to head Nuclep’s internal audit.
The investigation procedure opened internally was a “preliminary investigation”, with no investigation being registered in the CGU system.
“After regular instruction, the internal affairs department concluded that the investigation was filed, given the absence of damage to the treasury and willful misconduct, a conclusion that had the seal of the CGU’s own sector inspectorate”, says the note from the MME.
“Minister Bento Albuquerque, during the period in which he was a member of Nuclep’s Board of Directors, greatly contributed to the approval of several measures that, without doubt, improved the company’s governance”, says the folder.
Among the measures mentioned is an expansion of the powers of the board to a greater extent in the inspection of management acts by the executive board, with advice from an audit committee.
The CGU’s recommendation to determine responsibilities in the promotion of drivers only reached the Board of Directors in March 2019, according to the MME. A year earlier, the board had already decided to extinguish all assistant positions, according to the portfolio.
Drivers returned to their original positions in May 2018, and a regulatory act in November 2019 defined criteria for trusted roles at Nuclep, says the MME.
During the Bolsonaro government, Nuclep became linked to the MME, headed by Bento Albuquerque. Before, the state-owned company, which takes care of equipment for the nuclear, defense and energy areas, was linked to the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation.
Seixas, the president, is the only remaining member of the 2016 executive board. Of the four current directors, three are from the Navy.
The president of Nuclep is one of 16 soldiers, from the three Armed Forces, who preside over state-owned companies in the Bolsonaro government and who accumulate salaries, such as the sheet showed on September 4th.
Seixas receives R$ 60.6 thousand gross. He accumulates the salary of the Navy and that of Nuclep.
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