The former president who was arrested by the National Front coordinated Lula’s transition group

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The structure has been guaranteed by law since 2002 and tends to attract attention during government changes. Lula’s transition team consisted of 33 specialized technical groups, one of which was concerned with social security policies.

Stefanotto and five other members were responsible for coordination, which also included representatives of entities investigated by the Federal Police and the INSS CPI for pension anomalies – such as the Confederation of Pensioners and Pensioners (Sindnapi) and the National Confederation of Agricultural Workers (Contag).

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According to investigations, at that time Stefanotto was already receiving monthly bribes from another entity, the National Confederation of Family Farmers and Rural Household Entrepreneurs (Conafer), in exchange for his work on behalf of the entity at INSS.

He was a deputy lawyer in the Institute’s specialized federal prosecutor’s office in São Paulo and, according to sources linked to the investigation, was receiving between R$50,000 and R$100,000 a month from Conaver in exchange for his influence in the body.

The beginning of the payments, according to the National Front, came with Conaver’s commitment to the technical cooperation agreement in 2017, when he was serving as municipal prosecutor. This mechanism is the basis of the so-called associative discounts that supported the fraud.

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At the beginning of Lula’s government, in March 2023, Stefanotto was appointed Director of Budget, Finance and Logistics at the Institute. But he spent only three months in this position. In July of the same year, the then Minister of Social Security, Carlos Lope, appointed him to serve as mayor, succeeding Glauco’s interim director, Andre Wamburg.

He remained at the helm of the institute until April this year, when the first phase of the National Front’s “No Discount” operation exposed the fraud of undeserved cuts. Lope initially tried to keep him in his position, but Lula ordered his expulsion from the institute.

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We requested the defense of Alessandro Stefanotto through the advice of the law firm and asked whether business procedures were on the agenda of the technical team during the transition period and whether there was any proposal or discussion about auditing, suspending or reviewing the nexus deductions agreements at source for pensioners. We did not receive any response until the report was completed. The space remains open.

Two months before the 2022 elections, Congress repealed the rule that required entity-beneficiary laws to be rechecked every two years. The cuts have been provided for in legislation since the 1990s, but Congress itself in 2019, based on a temporary measure by Bolsonaro’s government, created a mechanism to periodically review the agreements.

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As O GLOBO showed, the repeal, which directly benefited the unions that provided the illegal discounts, was “smuggled” in a project on microloans for entrepreneurs reported by Rep. Luis Miranda (Republicans – DF).

Many of these entities appear alongside Alessandro Stefanotto in federal police investigation reports, and others are also part of the Technical Group of Social Security in the Lula Transition.

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At least two GT members are linked to Sindenabe: Tonia Galetti, a legal advisor and daughter of the union’s founder, and Luiz Antonio Adriano da Silva, known as Luizão, who is the entity’s secretary-general and linked to the Solidarity Party. Luizao was one of the coordinators alongside Stefanotto, while Tonia was part of the team work.

The lawyer is a controversial figure. Last April, shortly after the first PF operation uncovered the scheme, she allegedly warned then-Minister Carlos Lope at meetings of the National Social Security Council about the fraud in June 2023, almost two years before the police investigations began.

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The Sundanabi member of the GPC stated that the matter was not discussed again by the council until March 2025, when she left office.

Although she claimed to have sought condemnation of the scheme at the Department of Social Security, Tonya arrived at the committee as a target of opposition.

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CPI rapporteur Alfredo Gaspar (União Brasil-AL) explored the lawyer and her family’s receipt of R$20 million from the union. Tonya, in turn, claimed that the income was the result of her work and accused representatives and senators belonging to the group of “killing the messenger.”

Sindnapi has been one of the main targets of the INSS CPI so far. This is because, in addition to being one of the largest entities targeted by the National Front, the vice president of the federation is José Ferreira da Silva, Free Chico, who is the brother of President Lula.

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Gaspard even mentioned that there was a criminal organization within the guild. The rapporteur of the opponent fraud case at the Federal Supreme Court, Minister André Mendonça, last month ordered the freezing of a large sum of R$390 million in union assets and values.

Another trade unionist who was part of GT Social Security is Evandro José Murillo, Contag representative at the CNPS.

In a note sent to the press, Stefanotto’s defense stated that he would “prove his innocence” and described his arrest as “absolutely illegal” on the grounds that his client would not have caused “any kind of embarrassment to the investigation, cooperating from the beginning with the investigative work.”