According to federal police, Alessandro Stefanutto, the former director of the National Institute of Social Security (INSS), is accused of accepting bribes for participating in a pension and pension misappropriation scheme disguised as consulting fees and technical assistance, and used several shell companies, including a pizzeria, to hide the amounts.
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According to PF, Stefanutto received up to R$250,000 per month. Most of the remittances took place between June 2023 and September 2024. Investigators said, “It was clear that Stefanutto repeatedly accepted bribes in exchange for influence, using multiple shell companies, including a law firm, a real estate company, and a pizzeria, to conceal the amounts (money laundering).”
The defense says the former mayor will “prove his innocence.” PF said the amounts were paid by companies linked to the scheme’s financial operator, businessman Cicero Marcelino, and were disguised as consultancy fees or technical assistance fees.
This information was contained in the judgment of Minister Andrés Mendonça of the Federal Supreme Court (STF), which approved a new phase of the no-discount operation carried out by the PF this Thursday. This time, we focused on the efforts of the National Confederation of Family Farmers and Rural Family Entrepreneurs (Conafer), one of the organizations that irregularly conducts association discounts.
Stefanutto was arrested during the operation. The public servant’s defense said in a statement that the arrest “did not cause any trouble to the investigation and has been cooperating with the investigation from the beginning, and the arrest is completely illegal.” The defense also said the former local government chief would “prove his innocence.”
According to police representatives, Stefanut’s involvement in the scheme began in 2017 with Conafer’s legal facilitation for the signing of a Technical Cooperation Agreement (ACT). This agreement is necessary for companies to automatically deduct retirement and pension benefits.
“There is evidence that Stefanut, the subject of the investigation, was the chief prosecutor and later the president of the municipality, and played the role of an organizer of criminal groups within the INSS,” the judgment said.
The investigation also shows that the former president was part of the core of a political organization whose purpose was to “ensure the functioning of the fraudulent scheme and impunity through actions within the public authorities themselves.”
He assessed and approved the maintenance of the agreement between INSS and Conafar despite facing technical warnings about discrepancies in membership lists and signs of tampering with discount authorizations, the investigation said.
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