AGU members earn R$6.1 billion in fees in 2025 and Messias earns R$700 thousand

More than 12 thousand members of public law careers shared R$6.1 billion in death fees paid in 2025. The figure symbolizes a record in the payment of the benefit which, last year, included retroactive funds and health and food assistance, tripling the amount paid in the previous year (R$2.1 billion).

One of the beneficiaries of the payments is the Minister of the Attorney General’s Office (AGU), Jorge Messias, who is a career civil servant at the department. He earned more than R$700,000 in fees last year, an amount that was added to his salary of R$46,300 as minister of state.

Messias received at least R$19,000 per month in fees, but there were peaks, such as in January and July last year, when he received, respectively, R$193,000 and R$307,000. Although significant, the amounts received by the minister still lag behind what was paid to other members of the AGU. A retired prosecutor received R$444,000 in a single month.

AGU’s fees are intended for civil servants in public law careers who win legal actions. The benefit consists of the amount paid by the losing party to the winner to reimburse legal expenses during the process.

In 2020, the Federal Supreme Court (STF) decided that the benefit could not exceed the public service salary ceiling, which is equivalent to the R$44,000 received by the Court’s ministers. However, the Transparency Portal does not mention the incidence of the “ceiling reduction” – a rule that cuts any amount above the limit – on fees. But, as Estadão showed, the determination has been disregarded.

The legal fees of public servants are managed by the Legal Fees Curator Council (CCHA), a private non-profit association linked to the AGU. The institution exists to operationalize and distribute the resources collected, but does not detail the criteria used to pay each server.

Until 2015, when the new Civil Procedure Code (CPP) was sanctioned, public lawyers and prosecutors were not entitled to the benefit. But the authors of the new law understood that, although they are paid salaries, they must also receive compensation for legal victories on behalf of the Union.

The new CPP stipulated that the rates must be from 1% to 20% – a lower percentage to avoid excessive burdens in cases where public authorities are defeated. The amounts paid to each member of the public legal profession are described on the Transparency Portal and a page maintained by the AGU, which adopted transparency measures for these payments after public scrutiny.