Lupi admits delay in response to INSS frauds and says Institute “is not a tavern”
The Minister of Social Security, Carlos Lupi, provided clarification on Monday (28) to the National Council of Social Security (CNPS) about the crisis in the INSS, which was triggered after the Federal Police carried out an operation against directors and then president of the institute, Alessandro Stefanutto.
During the meeting, Lupi emphasized the dimension of the INSS and mentioned that the agency currently operates with only half of the staff 15 years ago.
“There are 20 thousand, 21 thousand employees, half of what has been 15 years ago,” said the minister, noting that the INSS currently manages about 40.6 million beneficiaries and receives 1.4 million new requests per month.
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“The damage to the party is already done,” said PDT leader in the House, Deputy Mário Heringer (MG)
Lupi stated that all entities investigated on suspicion of irregularities are “old” and emphasized the need to wait for the Federal Police investigations to be completed. “The INSS is not a corner botequin. You can’t do it in 24 hours. The work needs to be done carefully,” he said.
The minister reiterated that he has taken steps to try to contain the deviations, including the dismissal of the Benefit Director, André Fidelis, the editing of a new normative instruction to harden the rules of discounts and perform an internal audit at the Institute.
Nevertheless, Lupi acknowledged that the government’s response took a long time: “It was too long. It’s a difficult time when you suffer a lot of pressure,” he said, adding that he did a dynamic reading of the report on Sunday (27).
Investigations of operation “without discount” revealed a fraud scheme in the associative discount agreements in pensions, with an estimated deviation of about $ 6 billion. Since last Wednesday (24), all transfers to associative entities have been suspended.
