Media Leaks and Corruption in Brazil: The Infostorm of Impeachment and the Lava-Jato Scandal by Mads Bjelke Damgaard

Author:Mads Bjelke Damgaard [Damgaard, Mads Bjelke]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Caribbean & Latin American, Media Studies, Social Science, Political Science, World, General
ISBN: 9781351049283
Google: 1DhjDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 40591057
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-07-06T11:09:34+00:00

The Tribunal for the Accounts of the Union

A number of governmental audit bodies exist in parallel in Brazil. The executive branch appoints a comptroller-general (Controladoria Geral da União), the Ministério Público has offices called Ministério Público de Contas at both federal and state levels, while the audit organization of the legislative branch of government is the Tribunal das Contas da União (henceforth TCU). In this auditing body, routine accounting, state budget auditing, and special case-by-case investigations are conducted. The TCU reports on budget irregularities in large-scale government projects and produces a yearly independent audit of the state finances. TCU normally only acts as advisor to Congress, but can also (since 2001, when the state budget regulation was revised) request that the parliamentary budget committee block fund transfers when severe irregularities are encountered in projects.

The TCU court is headed by nine so-called ministers, titled like the Supreme Court judges, despite the fact that TCU judges are not part of the judiciary, nor necessarily trained in law. Six of the TCU judges are nominated by the Congress, and three are nominated by the president. Two of the latter must be career public servants with a background in the TCU. The ministers are appointed for life but must retire at the age of 70. This means that “politicians are frequently nominated to join the TCU at the height or the end of their political career, in what is sometimes seen as a kind of early retirement” (Speck 2011: 155). The leadership of this accounting body thus, to a certain extent, reflects the composition and leading coalition of the Congress. The nomination for a seat in the TCU “comes with strings attached, since the government with its majority in Congress does not expect any trouble from its former allies once they are transferred to the TCU” (ibid.). TCU auditors are, for that reason, rarely called to testify about audit findings in the committees and hearings of Congress (ibid.: 147).

Despite not being part of the judiciary branch, the TCU has some powers to sanction and issue fines to government actors found guilty of misconduct. In practice, the implementation of sanctions and fines is often delayed, because the TCU verdicts can and normally will be questioned in the state and federal courts. This fact, according to Speck, is the weakest link of the accountability mechanisms of the TCU (ibid.: 144).

The political network and dependency of TCU ministers is probably an even weaker link, however. During 2015–2016, three TCU ministers underwent investigation during the Lava-Jato scandal. According to various testimonies of the case, the ministers Aroldo Cedraz, Vital do Rego, and Raimundo Carreira have received bribes, possibly to entice them to actively obstruct audits in the TCU, or as kickbacks related to when they were still in political office. Moreover, Cedraz’s son, the lawyer Tiago Cedraz, was subpoenaed by the police in 2017 on the suspicion that he had negotiated contracts between Petrobras and an American company and received US$20 million in kickbacks. In one of the

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