Dino gives the government 30 days to standardize rules on the use of amendments in universities

Supreme Court Minister Flávio Dino gave 30 days to the Ministry of Education (MEC), the Attorney General’s Office (AGU) and the Comptroller General of the Union (CGU) to define standards or guidelines on application and accountability adequate parliamentary amendments in universities and their respective supporting foundations. In the order, published this Sunday, the 12th, Dino considered the “imperativeness of the preventive dimension of control”.

“There are reports in the records that such Foundations, through hiring NGOs without objective criteria, have served as instruments for transferring amounts arising from parliamentary amendments”, wrote Dino in the decision.

At the beginning of the month, Dino suspended the transfer of parliamentary amendments to 13 private entities that do not provide adequate transparency or do not disclose the required information according to the CGU report delivered to the Supreme Court. Of these entities, eight are foundations that manage funds for research and operations at public universities, such as the University of São Paulo (USP) and the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). The decision was made within the scope of Psol action that deals with the so-called “secret budget”.

The CGU report showed that only four out of 26 entities supervised by the body had fully efficient transparency systems. In the period analyzed by the CGU, between December 2nd and 21st, R$133.3 million were authorized (pledged, in budget jargon) for the benefit of entities considered non-transparent. Of this amount, R$53.8 million was allocated to foundations linked to public universities.

Some of the affected foundations have already presented to Dino the improvements made to their portals and asked for the funds to be released. The deadline for the federal government to implement the blockade ended last Friday, the 10th.