University of São Paulo: CGU plays a fundamental role in the transparency of public management and in the prevention of corruption

The Comptroller General of the Union (CGU) was established by Law No. 10,683 of May 28, 2003 and, in 2023, completes 20 years. This body belongs to the Executive Power and has the role of controlling the transparency of public management.

“I have no doubt that much of the transparency and visibility of public management today is greater because of the work of the CGU. Today there is an entire normative and institutional system that is absolutely fundamental in this process”, says Professor Sebastião Botto Tojal from the Department of State Law at the Faculty of Law at USP.

Functions
With so many acronyms, it is common to confuse the TCU (Union Court of Auditors) with the CGU. Tojal explains: “The Federal Court of Accounts, contrary to what common sense thinks, is not a body of the Judiciary. It is an auxiliary administrative body of the Legislative Power and, to that extent, contributes to evaluating the contracts entered into by the public administration and identifying errors, suspicions of the Public Prosecution Service”. The CGU, on the other hand, has responsibility and transparency on public affairs.



Although the functions of the Comptroller General of the Union do not change, they are being improved. “The CGU has evolved a lot in exercising its institutional role. It has been providing a very effective collaboration in seeking to hold accountable those who are directly or indirectly involved in fraudulent acts, acts of corruption. Recently, I noticed a concern with an action also of a preventive nature, as the current Minister of the CGU, Vinícius de Carvalho, indicated. We need to collaborate so that we have an increasingly transparent public management”, explains the professor.

In the anti-corruption process, the expert highlights two points of action: “We have two aspects: there is a disciplinary activity, which seeks to hold employees, public managers accountable; there is also a process for determining the responsibility of companies that may have committed acts of corruption in their relationship with public authorities. Therefore, there are two perspectives: one internally, for public servants and their performance, and the other externally, in determining the companies’ responsibilities. This second activity came with the Anti-Corruption Law”.

Anti-Corruption Law

Like the CGU, the Anti-Corruption Law, formally called Law No. 12,846 of August 1, 2013 , is also of great importance. For Tojal, the starting point of the laws regarding the issue of public management was Law No. 8,429 of June 2, 1992 , known as the Law of Administrative Improbity.

However, the relevance of the Anti-Corruption Law is in the context of its creation: “This law needs to be understood in a very particular context. There was clearly a quest to develop an institutionalized system of public management control. In 2013, it responds to this process, it responds to a great popular outcry”, points out the professor.

The specialist points out that there are points that are repeated between the laws, but the search for unity remains the main focus: “We are evolving well, but it is a slow process, resulting from experience itself. In my impression, today we are very close to a state in which we have a systematic, an idea of ​​unity, with defined roles, with the respective holders identified. I think my view is very optimistic, in that sense I think we will evolve to have a logic of combating corruption. I highlight, once again, this preventive role which the CGU has been responsible for developing”.