Brazil’s Social Safety Minister, Carlos Lupi, has resigned 9 days after police unveiled a significant corruption scandal which defrauded pensioners of $1.1bn (£829m).
Federal police allege that over the previous decade, the Nationwide Social Safety Institute (INSS) made unauthorised deductions from funds made to hundreds of thousands of pensioners.
The cash was allegedly paid to a number of associations and unions, which then shared the earnings with corrupt authorities officers.
Lupi has at all times denied any wrongdoing and stated he ordered an investigation as quickly as he heard in regards to the allegations.
“I’m making this determination with the knowledge that my title has not been talked about at any time within the ongoing investigations,” Lupi wrote on X when asserting his resignation.
“I hope that the investigations observe their pure course, determine these accountable and punish, with rigor, those that used their positions to hurt the working individuals,” he wrote.
Operation No Low cost (Sem Desconto in Portuguese) has seen 700 federal brokers concern 211 search warrants throughout Brazil, federal police stated in a press release.
Property price greater than $177m have been seized – together with luxurious vehicles, jewelry and greater than $200,000 in money.
The fraud allegedly concerned registering pensioners as members of retirees’ associations with out their consent, however in consequence they’d cash frequently deducted from their advantages for the memberships.
Police stated the scheme focused a few of the poorest areas of the nation, the place pensioners have been unlikely to note the fraud or complain about it.
The pinnacle of the INSS resigned final week over the allegations, and 6 public servants have been faraway from their posts, federal police stated.
Investigators are specializing in greater than 6bn actual they imagine was diverted between 2019-2024, however how a lot of that cash was taken illegally stays unclear.
The INSS’s director of budgets and finance, Débora Floriano, stated a job pressure will might be set as much as return the lacking cash, however at this stage they’re nonetheless making an attempt to find out the scale of the fraud.
Carlos Lupi is the second particular person in President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s authorities to lose their place because of corruption allegations in lower than a month.
In early April, communications minister Juscelino Filho stepped down after he was charged with taking bribes in 2022.
Lula himself spent 1.5 years in jail in 2018-2019 for corruption, however the conviction was later thrown out, permitting him to run – and win – his third time period as Brazil’s president.
