Manssur and Vicentini became the heads of the sports betting area of the CSMV Advogados law firm in São Paulo. When contacted, they said that they had received approval from the Public Ethics Commission (CEP) of the Presidency of the Republic.
The deputy attorney general at the Federal Court of Auditors (TCU), Lucas Furtado, filed a representation this Monday (5) for the body to investigate the move of José Francisco Manssur and Simone Vicentini, who worked on the regulation of so-called ‘Bets’ at the Ministry of Finance, to head the sports betting area of the office.
As revealed by the newspaper O Estadão, the former deputy secretary of the Secretariat of Prizes and Betting (SPA), Simone Vicentini, and the former special advisor to the Executive Secretariat, José Francisco Manssur, left the Ministry of Finance to coordinate the recently structured betting and sports area of the firm CSMV Advogados.
The firm has 20 football clubs and a multinational company that collects and analyzes data for betting houses among its clients. “In this context, it is up to the TCU to request that this Court, using its legal powers, investigate the facts reported in the news item transcribed above in order to verify whether the situation of immorality reported therein resulted in acts, influenced by the former public agents mentioned, that could be considered as intended for personal gain, in conflict with public interests, immoral and illegitimate, even if occasionally and formally supported by law,” wrote Furtado.
Manssur left the Ministry of Finance in February and was announced as the new partner of CSMV Advogados on June 5, just over three months later. Vicentini was dismissed from the Ministry in May and became head of the firm two months later, on the 17th. When contacted, they said that they had received approval from the Public Ethics Commission (CEP) of the Presidency of the Republic.
In fact, the Public Ethics Committee exempted Manssur and Vicentini from the six-month paid quarantine, a device used to avoid conflicts of interest in the so-called revolving door. However, the decisions did not consider that the former secretaries would work in the same sector that they regulated. When they contacted the Ethics Committee, both said only that they would practice law and did not present a formal proposal.
In this sense, the committee advised that the former secretaries cannot use privileged information, nor act in processes in which they participated in the Ministry of Finance. Finally, it required the duty to "immediately" inform the agency if they received any proposals to perform private activities.
Compliance with these requirements, however, is not monitored by the committee, which depends on some complaint to act. After this decision, only Vicentini officially informed the agency that he would work at the office.
Law No. 12,813 of 2013 classifies as a conflict of interest when former high-ranking civil servants work, in the six months after their dismissal, in companies with which they have established a "relevant relationship due to the exercise of their position or employment." Representatives of CSMV Advogados were received at least five times by Vicentini and Manssur when they were at the Treasury.
The two former secretaries worked on the preparation of proposals, processing and approval of Law 14,790/2023, which initiated the regulation of fixed-odds betting in Brazil, in addition to the publication of Ordinance 827/2024, in May of this year, which authorizes the operation of betting houses in the country.
Source: O Estadão
