Bolsonaro Announces R$2.5 Billion from Petrobras for Education

By Arkady Petrov

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – President Jair Bolsonaro said on Thursday, May 16th, that he expects to allocate R$2.5 billion (US$620 million) to the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology from penal fines paid by Petrobras. The number is higher than the R$1.7 billion allocated to federal universities.

The statement was released live on Facebook in the U.S. city of Dallas (Texas), where he was honored as “Personality of the Year”. Standing next to the president were: Pedro Guimarães, president of Caixa; Admiral Bento Albuquerque, Minister of Mines and Energy; and an interpreter.

“This is the United States. A very complex agreement here, Petrobras’ R$2.5 billion penalty is returning to Brazil and may be used in something unrelated to Petrobras. We should take this resource to the Ministry of Education, with the very active participation of Raquel Dodge, the Prosecutor General of the Republic. If possible, I would like to partly transfer it to the Ministry of Science and Technology. We need to invest in research,” he said.

The R$2.5 billion mentioned by Bolsonaro are a part of the amounts recovered from Lava Jato. At one point, the Public Prosecutor’s Curitiba Office intended to set up a fund to administer this money.

There were many protests, including those from the PGR (Prosecutor General’s Office) and from congressmen, who filed suit against the measure in the TCU (Federal Audit Court).

The Lava Jato prosecutors retreated from the decision to set up the fund on March 12th and decided to negotiate the allocation of R$2.5 billion from Petrobras with the Prosecutor General’s Office.

On March 15th, Minister Alexandre de Moraes of the Federal Supreme Court (STF) suspended all effects of the agreement signed by the Curitiba prosecutors.

President Bolsonaro once again criticized actions against the blocking of the budget for federal universities, announced by the Minister of Education, Abraham Weintraub. As far as he is concerned, protesting students have been deceived by leftist parties.