The Federal Comptroller General (CGU) identified 735.7 million reais blocked in federal agreement accounts classified as irregular – inactive, in default or without financial execution. The organization highlights the failures of ministries and federal entities in controlling transfers and respecting the rules that determine the use of resources or their return to the National Treasury.
The survey, obtained by Metropolisesanalyzed the instruments signed between 2008 and 2024. Most of the money stopped is linked to transfers from the Health, Integration and Regional Development and Sports portfolios.
To understand
- The audit identified BRL735.7 million worth of irregular deals, with money remaining in inactive, overdue or unfulfilled accounts for more than 180 days without justification.
- According to the CGU, resources remain unused mainly for three reasons: lack of operational monitoring capacity; an execution that does not begin or never takes place; and the lack of action by the federal government in the face of irregularities.
- There are works that have not started, calls for tenders that have not been opened and projects that have been frozen.
- If returned to the National Treasury, the money could be used for any other budgetary purpose, financing other public policies.
Federal Agreement Accounts are specific bank accounts opened automatically when the Union releases resources in favor of states, municipalities, universities, entities and hospitals. These sums can only be used for the purposes set out in the agreement, which finance local actions, such as the purchase of ambulances, the construction of schools or infrastructure works.
According to the report, irregularities have occurred since 2008 and concern different federal governments. During this period, Lula, Dilma Rousseff, Michel Temer and Jair Bolsonaro passed through the Palácio do Planalto, without the responsible structures being able to establish control capable of preventing the balances from remaining frozen for years.
The audit, according to technicians interviewed by the report, attributes the problem to the lack of operational capacity of granting and contracting agencies to monitor and inspect the instruments of the Transferegov platform. Even with systems to track operations, the lack of effective monitoring resulted in resources being idle for long periods of time.
“The main causes identified in the work were the lack of operational capacity on the part of granting bodies and contracting bodies to carry out effective monitoring and control of voluntary transfer instruments on the Transferegov.br platform,” indicates the CGU, in the material prepared and sent to the ministries.
The body’s report continues: “In this way, the creation of mechanisms that reduce these inconsistencies will lead to an increase in allocative efficiency as a whole, encouraging good management, since states and municipalities are directly dependent on public resources that are transferred through voluntary transfer instruments, given that the overwhelming majority of states and municipalities have already committed their budgetary revenues to legal or contractual commitments.”
Today, approximately 12 billion reais are distributed among 27,400 federal agreement accounts – amounts that include active instruments, in execution and within legal deadlines. Within this universe, 735.7 million BRL are concentrated in 2,270 agreements considered irregular.
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UGT figures indicate that BRL 68.8 million is spread across 1,258 inactive agreements; BRL 132.8 million in 968 agreements in default or with overdue accounts; and BRL 533.9 million in 44 agreements without financial execution – because they are inactive and have not returned the balance, are in default or have not been executed for more than 180 days without justification. In other words: the highest amount corresponds to cases in which the government releases the money, the state or municipality receives it, but the work, for example, does not start within six months and there is no justification for this.
The report indicates that responsible teams, both within the federal government and in states and municipalities, are unable to continuously monitor the movement of accounts or charge the return of balances when execution does not occur. In other words: the money stays there.
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1 billion reais arrested
CGU data shows that today there are approximately 1.4 billion reais in agreements that have not been executed a single cent after receiving the first payment from the federal government and that have remained for more than 180 days without any financial movement.
These values represent works that never saw the light of day, public purchases that were never put to tender, contracts that were never signed and projects that remained frozen even with the money deposited in the account.
According to the report, four departments concentrate 67.7% of this amount parked: the ministries of the City, Integration and Regional Development, Agriculture and Justice.
The difference between this volume and the R$735.7 million already classified as irregular is that the total of R$1.4 billion includes agreements that may be on schedule, present formal justifications or have not yet undergone a detailed assessment.
In other words: unused money is a red flag, but it only becomes an irregularity when it is proven that the rules are not respected – as in the case of inactive, faulty or unjustified instruments.
This is the second time that the UGT has produced reporting on the balances held in approved accounts. The money, however, did not return to the public coffers and remained in these accounts.
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