Report Suggests Use Of Corporate Card In Emergency
Decree No. 3892, created in 2001 by the then President of the Republic Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and amended in subsequent decrees, regulated the existing practice and institutionalized the corporate card as a means of replacing checks in the payment of emergency public expenses for some specific public agents. The measure allowed more transparency and security for the control of public spending.
“Not just anyone can use the corporate card within the three administrative spheres, Executive, Judiciary and Legislative. There are bodies such as the Presidency of the Republic and the Ministries that impose their own norms that regulate the use of these cards”, explains Rubens Beçak, professor at the Faculty of Law of Ribeirão Preto (FDRP) at USP. However, the idea of having a cash reserve for emergency situations is old. According to Beçak, there is a decree from 1986, nº 9372, which already disciplined the use of cards by the Presidency of the Republic.
But the big question that arises is: how much is spent on a corporate card? What is known is that it is not little. According to the Comptroller General of the Union (CGU), the two governments of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva had an average annual expenditure of R$ 111.6 million. The governments of Dilma Rousseff spent about R$ 105.4 million per year. The government of former President Michel Temer had an average annual expenditure of BRL 66 million and that of former President Jair Bolsonaro, an average annual expenditure of BRL 66.9 million . The specific expenses of the Presidency show that Lula and Bolsonaro were the ones who used the card the most. (See table)
The later decrees
By decree 3892/21, the corporate card allows the purchase of airline tickets and the purchase of materials and services. However, in 2005, during President Lula’s first term, a new decree, nº 5355, changed the name of the card to the Federal Government Payment Card and regulated its use by bodies and entities of the direct federal public administration, autarkic and functional . This decree typifies the possibilities of using the corporate card for expenses classified as supplying funds, occasional expenses such as travel or services that require immediate payment, expenses that must be made confidentially, small expenses, that is, with a value of up to BRL 800, in the case of purchases and services, and BRL 1,500, in the case of contracting works and engineering services.
Despite the official change in the name of the card, it continues to be called a corporate card and, in 2008, after decree no. be carried out through conventional processes that involve, for example, bidding or bank transfer, in addition to expenses that need to be carried out confidentially, such as the investigation of any irregularity.
A new ordinance, dated March 2022, instituted a special regime “to meet the peculiarities of essential bodies” such as the Vice-Presidency office, Ministry of Economy, Federal Police, military or intelligence agencies.
undue expenses
Beçak states that, as these are exceptional expenses, the amount used should not be seen as an impediment or even suspicious. “It should be used for what the name says, emergency and exceptional expenses, the problem is that it often ends up being used for other things that do not fit into its attributions. It’s not about volume per se, but rather purchases and services that look suspicious and fall outside the card’s scope,” he analyzes.
According to the professor, for the public authority, there is a maxim: It is not enough to be correct, it needs to appear correct. “You can buy just one ice cream, but ice cream is not an essential and exceptional expense. It gets weird”, adds Beçak. To ensure transparency and security in the use of the card, the data can be accessed through the Transparency Portals, serving as the basis for a potential investigation into the legality of the expenses incurred.