IDP's Data Science Study Group, under the leadership of prof. Claudiomar Matias Rolim Filho (EPPGG acting in IPEA), in partnership with data scientist Leonardo Sales, conducted a survey crossing publicly available data in order to identify potential undue emergency assistance payments offered by the federal government to confront the crisis caused by the pandemic of COVID19.

The aim was to assess whether there were undue payments of emergency aid. To this end, servers from six states of the Federation were analyzed, only from the Executive Branch, using the full name and CPF substrate.

It was concluded that 5830 employees (once again, from just six states and only from the Executive Branch) would be receiving emergency aid.

Furthermore, as a High Income criterion, using publicly available data on the Superior Electoral Court website, the incomes and CPFs of former candidates in the 2016 and 2018 elections, with declared assets exceeding R$500 thousand, were cross-referenced. 810 former candidates were found. The total assets of these candidates, declared to the TSE, is R$1.19 billion.

As it is not possible to identify, in a preliminary analysis, whether a given public servant or former candidate is, in fact, receiving undue payment or had their CPF cloned in a way, the researchers thought it would be advisable to suppress the nominal list, presenting only the results.

The researchers decided to release access to the research methodology, enabling it to be replicated or applied on a larger scale by state or federal public oversight bodies with access to data that is not publicly available. The competent authorities have the capacity to apply a similar methodology and cross-reference the complete database of municipal, state and federal public servants to identify fraud.

Check below a summary of what was raised, proposed and implemented:

THE RESEARCH

Law no. 13982/2020 amended law no. 8742/1993 which defines parameters for characterizing people in situations of social vulnerability. In addition, it creates financial benefits to help families meeting these criteria. In summary, the program’s eligibility rules are:

• Not having formal employment (intended for self-employed workers with informal income, who are not public agents, including temporary ones, and are not holding an elected office)
• Being unemployed or working as a MEI (individual microentrepreneur)
• Be an individual contributor to Social Security
• Be an informal worker registered with CadÚnico (Cadastro Único)
• Teenage mothers (under 18 years old)

On the other hand, those who:

• Belongs to a family with a monthly income per person greater than half a minimum wage (this year, R$522.50) or a total monthly family income (everything the family receives) above three minimum wages (this year, R$3,135)
• Are you receiving unemployment benefits?
• Are you receiving social security, assistance or federal income transfer benefits, with the exception of Bolsa Família
• Received taxable income above the ceiling of R$28,559.70 in 2018, according to the Income Tax declaration

It is important to keep in mind that the aid only deals with income flow variables (salaries) and not income stock (i.e., assets)

To identify possible irregular payments, cross-checks were made between Emergency Aid data and:

• Of the assets declared by candidates in the 2016 and 2018 elections
• Of federal public servants
• From public servants of the Executive of the states of DF, MA, PE, PI and SC

As evidenced, the law is not explicit in relation to the beneficiary's assets. In any case, we understand that it is an indirect factor of non-compliance with the conditionality of “vulnerable people” having very high assets . It is unlikely to assume that citizens with millionaire wealth meet all these requirements, especially those related to annual income.

As for data on public servants, there is a clear prohibition, since being a public servant means having a stable means of income.

Emergency Aid data was obtained from the open data section of the Transparency Portal.

The asset Superior Electoral Court 's electoral data repository , available here . These refer to Candidates and Declared Assets , for the 2016 and 2018 elections.

The public service connection data was obtained from the Union and State transparency portals available here ( Union , DF , MA , PE , PI , SC )

The five states mentioned were not chosen at random. They are the only states in which the Executive Branch provides, in manipulable data, not only the list of civil servants with their respective salaries, but also the CPF subscript (6 digits of the CPF, from the 4th to the 9th). Although all other State Executive Powers make the monthly payment list for employees available on the Transparency Portals, some of them provide it in PDF format (making it impossible to manipulate the data) or provide it in a manipulable format, but without the CPF (which also makes it impossible to manipulation given that the work of manually differentiating homonyms is of low effectiveness). No Judiciary provides a list of civil servants with a CPF, and most provide the data in PDF spreadsheets.

METHODOLOGY

The objective of the cross-reference was to identify candidates with high assets declared to the TSE in the 2016 or 2018 elections and public servants who are receiving Emergency Aid . Additional details:

• To compare records between two data sources (Emergency Aid and TSE or Emergency Aid and server databases), we look for a coincidence, at the same time, of the Full Name and CPF Substrate fields (6 digits of the CPF, from the 4th to the 9th ).
• High Income criterion , in the case of TSE data, we consider declared assets greater than R$500 thousand.
• Validation : Although it is rare, it may happen that 2 people have exactly the same name and the same 6-digit sequence, in the same position, on the CPF. A small margin of error must be considered as a result of this.
• In the specific case of the candidates, it was possible to confirm all cases. After identifying the cases via cross-referencing, all records on the Federal Government's Transparency Portal were confirmed, one by one, through consultation via the data API . The results can also be validated by consulting the candidate's CPF (which is fully reported in the TSE databases) in the general search on the Transparency Portal . The respective declared assets can be verified in the DivulgaCandContas , from the TSE or on portals that replicate this data, such as Estadão Política .

RESULTS

A) BENEFICIARY WITH HIGH EQUITY

• 810 coincidences , which indicates that 810 candidates (in the 2016 or 2018 elections) with assets declared to the TSE greater than R$500 thousand are, in the last available extraction, receiving emergency aid.
• These 810 beneficiaries have assets declared to the TSE of R$1.19 billion.
• Below, the 10 states with the highest number of cases:

B) SERVERS

• 5830 cases, of which:
  • 40 in the Union
  • 532 in Maranhão
  • 514 in the Federal District
  • 763 in Pernambuco
  • 3136 in Piauí
  • 845 in Santa Catarina

Conclusion

Through a simple search, it was possible to find 5,830 employees possibly receiving emergency aid. This means a flow of 3.5 million reais per month, 10.5 million reais in three months, for people who are not eligible (and who virtually do not need) the aid.

Our research focused on just six states of the federation, only on the Executive Branch, using only the CPF substrate and only through open data. It can be assumed that the number of discoveries using the comparison with the CPFs of all civil servants, of all powers, of all States of the Federation (information that supervisory bodies can legally obtain for investigation) would be much greater.

In addition, we understand that adopting equity criteria can improve the focus of the program.