Mr. Alessandro Stefanutto, former director of the National Institute of Social Security (INSS) (Featured photo)He was arrested by the Federal Police (PF) on Thursday (November 13), and it was revealed that he was given the nickname “Italian” in the bribery documents of the National Federation of Family Farmers and Rural Family Entrepreneurs (Konafa). Conafer is one of the organizations involved in a multibillion-dollar scheme to provide unfair discounts to retirees. big city.
According to PF, Stefanutto received R$250,000 a month in bribes paid by Conafer through companies and pizzerias.
A spreadsheet containing Conafer’s alleged payments included nicknames for multiple public agencies. For example, former INSS benefits director Andre Fidelis was considered “Hero A.” The agency’s former attorney general, Virgilio de Oliveira Filho, will be named “Hero V” and Stefanutto will be “Italian.” All were arrested this Thursday.
The association gave discounts of R$688 million, and according to the PF, more than 90% of these funds went to shell companies, some of which were used to pay bribes to public officials to maintain an agreement with INSS that allowed the association’s monthly membership fee discounts to be incorporated directly into pension salaries.
According to the PF’s request, Stefanutto “repeatedly” accepted bribes from Conafar in exchange for “influence” “through the use of several shell companies, including Stelo Advogados e Asociados, Delicia Italiana Pizas, and Moinhos Immobiliaria.”
“After becoming INSS president, the monthly value of his bribes increased significantly to R$250,000. His payments came directly from the large-scale fraud chain of Konafar,” the PF said.
According to the PF, “almost the entire amount was paid between June 2023 and September 2024 (excluding a payment of R$ 250,000 made in October 2022).”
Investigators allege that the former INSS president “received monthly payments disguised as consultancy fees and technical assistance from companies linked to financier Cicero Marcelino de Sousa Santos.”
Stefanutto had already been judicially dismissed during the first phase of Operation No Discount, which was launched in April this year in response to unfair discount practices uncovered by judicial authorities. big city.
He is accused of negligence in signing a law that not only allowed companies to continue deducting deductions from retirees, but also allowed them to register new members using unique biometrics.
One year after this plan was exposed, big cityDespite this, companies still managed to withhold more than R$2 billion from retirees, and only one company with modest revenue had its contract canceled under Stefanut’s government.
PF estimates that fraud will reach R$6.3 billion between 2019 and 2025. The government has so far returned about 2.5 billion reais to 3.7 million retirees who were harmed by the unfair discount system.
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