Who Benefits When Public Money Loses Its Trail? Brazil Presidential Election 2026

Funds, tax breaks, Banco Master, and the challenge of preventing power and opacity from erasing the history of money

Corruption does not steal only money.

When millions of reais fail to reach the purpose for which they were collected, medical appointments, medicines, schools, sanitation, pensions, public safety, infrastructure, and opportunities that may never be recovered can disappear with them.

But there is a more sophisticated form of capture of collective wealth.

It begins when private or criminal interests do not merely seek to circumvent a rule, but try to get closer to those who supervise institutions, manage funds, grant benefits, decide public budgets, or have the power to change the rule itself.

That is why one of the most important questions in Brazil’s 2026 presidential election may also be one of the simplest:

If the money belongs to society, why can its history still disappear inside the system?

Who made the decision?

Who received the money?

How much did they receive?

Which fund was involved?

Which tax benefit was granted?

Who wrote the rule?

Did the money move from one fund to another?

Was it sent abroad?

And most importantly:

What did society receive in return?

The purpose of this article is not to accuse any presidential candidate of corruption, nor to use personal wealth as evidence of wrongdoing. Asset declarations are provided by the candidates themselves to Brazil’s Electoral Justice system and made public by the Superior Electoral Court, the TSE, through DivulgaCandContas.

Our goal is different: to examine how each presidential proposal approaches money, the State, and oversight, and then present a BrainLatam proposal for expanded traceability of public money.

What the Presidential Candidates Propose

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, PT presidential candidate

Lula, Brazil’s current president and a candidate for reelection, proposes strengthening and modernizing the State, expanding social participation, digitizing public services, and changing the management of congressional budget amendments. Economically, his program maintains the State as an active driver of development and social policy.

Assets declared to the TSE: approximately R$ 4.8 million.

The BrainLatam question is: increasing the Executive Branch’s planning capacity may address who decides part of the budget, but will citizens be able to follow the money after the decision has been made?

Flávio Bolsonaro, PL presidential candidate

Flávio Bolsonaro proposes substantial spending cuts, a reduction in the administrative structure, a new spending ceiling, privatizations, and a review of subsidies. His platform combines fiscal austerity with stricter public security policies.

Assets declared to the TSE: approximately R$ 8.2 million.

Reducing spending answers the question of how much the State spends.

Traceability adds another:

Who received the money that continued to be spent?

Romeu Zema, Novo presidential candidate

Romeu Zema presents one of the strongest proposals for reducing the size of the State among the presidential candidates. His platform includes fiscal adjustment, privatizations, administrative and pension reforms, and a review of public programs.

Assets declared to the TSE: approximately R$ 178.7 million.

But Zema’s record as governor of Minas Gerais provides a particularly relevant example for this debate.

During his administration, Eletrozema, a company belonging to his family’s business group and in which Zema maintained an ownership interest, received approximately R$ 2.28 million in presumed ICMS tax credits.

Published records indicate that the benefit was granted from 2024 onward. The Minas Gerais government stated that it was the continuation of sector-wide tax treatment, granted according to technical and legal criteria, without preferential treatment based on the company’s ownership structure.

This fact alone does not prove corruption or personal favoritism by Zema.

There is, however, another issue.

During his government, Zema opposed disclosing the individual beneficiaries of these tax benefits, arguing that publication could reveal commercially sensitive information.

The full list only became public later, after a judicial dispute.

In 2025, the special tax regimes that were eventually disclosed represented approximately R$ 19.4 billion in ICMS tax expenditures, while the projected total of state tax benefits reached approximately R$ 22.7 billion.

This is where the case becomes relevant to our question.

If the benefit is legal, technically justified, and impartial, transparency should protect it, not threaten it.

When a public official has economic interests that may be affected by government policy, knowing who benefited, by how much, under which rule, and with what outcome should not depend on a court battle years later.

The legality of a benefit does not eliminate the need for transparency about that benefit.

And this leads us to an important expansion of the idea:

Public money is not only what the State pays. We must also be able to see what the State decides not to collect.

Ronaldo Caiado, PSD presidential candidate

Ronaldo Caiado proposes fiscal responsibility, stabilization of public debt, a review of tax benefits, and restrictions on expenditure growth. In August 2026, he defended a constitutional limit under which public spending would grow by no more than half the rate of GDP growth.

Assets declared to the TSE: approximately R$ 52.6 million.

Reviewing tax benefits directly addresses the issue above.

But reviewing them is not enough.

Citizens must be able to know who receives each benefit, for how long, and what social or economic return justifies the tax expenditure.

Renan Santos, Missão presidential candidate

Renan Santos proposes strong fiscal adjustment and structural reforms. One highlighted element of his platform is a Managerial Responsibility Law, designed to incorporate goals and performance criteria into public administration.

Assets declared to the TSE: approximately R$ 795,000.

Results-based management could include an additional layer:

How much money entered, who executed it, and what measurable result appeared in the territory?

Augusto Cury, Avante presidential candidate

Augusto Cury proposes spending reductions, bringing the public deficit close to zero, and institutional reforms, alongside a broad agenda focused on education and human development.

Assets declared to the TSE: approximately R$ 242.3 million.

Fiscal balance tells us whether the accounts add up.

Transparency tells us who received the money before they did.

Clariana Barão, Democracia Cristã presidential candidate

Clariana Barão proposes fiscal responsibility, reviews of spending and subsidies, regulatory simplification, concessions, and public-private partnerships. In public security, her program explicitly includes financial tracking of criminal organizations and asset recovery.

Assets declared to the TSE: approximately R$ 1.8 million.

Her proposal creates an interesting connection:

if following the money can help identify organized crime, following public money can help prevent organized crime from reaching it in the first place.

Edmilson Costa, PCB presidential candidate

Edmilson Costa proposes nationalization of the financial system, creation of a Workers’ Bank, suspension of public debt payments, and renationalization of privatized companies.

Assets declared to the TSE: approximately R$ 454,000.

The greater the State’s control over the financial system, the greater society’s need to control those who control the State system itself.

Hertz Dias, PSTU presidential candidate

Hertz Dias supports a deeper break with the current economic model, including nationalizations and expanded social rights.

No assets were declared to the TSE.

Changing ownership of the system does not automatically eliminate opacity.

A black box can be private or public.

Rui Costa Pimenta, PCO presidential candidate

Rui Costa Pimenta also proposes extensive nationalization and a major restructuring of Brazil’s economic and financial system.

No assets were declared to the TSE.

Again, the same question appears:

Who watches the watcher?

Samara Martins, Unidade Popular presidential candidate

Samara Martins supports nationalizations, including major changes to the banking system, expansion of public services, and anti-corruption measures that include confiscation of assets in circumstances provided for in her platform. Unidade Popular later expanded the program initially registered.

Assets declared to the TSE: approximately R$ 33,000.

An economy with greater public control over banks also requires an infrastructure in which the decisions of public authorities themselves are deeply auditable.

Wilson Grassi, Democrata presidential candidate

Wilson Grassi presents a Federal Single Tax as one of the central elements of his economic program, alongside deregulation, automation, and digitization of tax collection and public administration. His plan links automation to reductions in fraud and administrative costs.

Assets declared to the TSE: approximately R$ 50 million.

His proposal naturally leads to another question:

if tax collection can be automated, why not automate part of the memory of public spending as well?

Pablo Marçal, PRTB presidential candidate, with his electoral status under review

So far, Pablo Marçal has not presented a sufficiently consolidated official government platform to allow an equivalent analysis without relying on scattered statements or assumptions.

Assets declared to the TSE after correction: approximately R$ 149.9 million.

An initial filing contained an error involving billions of reais in one investment and was later corrected.

On August 20, 2026, the TSE issued a precautionary decision preventing Marçal from using public campaign funds, participating in debates, and accessing free electoral broadcasting while his candidacy registration remained under review.

Regardless of the electoral dispute, the asset-declaration episode provides a simple lesson:

Transparency does not mean errors will never happen. It means errors can be found, recorded, and corrected.

Legality Is the Floor. It Should Not Be Democracy’s Moral Ceiling

Criminal corruption is illegal.

But not every integrity problem begins with someone breaking the law.

A regulation can favor specific groups.

A permission can be expanded.

A tax break can be entirely formal.

A fund can operate within existing rules.

A congressional amendment can pass through every required legislative procedure.

And society can still — and should — ask:

Who wrote it?

Who requested it?

Who influenced it?

Who received it?

Who benefited?

Why did we not know?

Brazil’s former RP9 congressional amendment mechanism, popularly known as the “secret budget,” provides an important historical example.

In 2022, the Federal Supreme Court declared the system unconstitutional because it violated principles including transparency, impartiality, morality, and publicity, especially because the identity of those proposing and benefiting from certain expenditures could not be clearly identified.

And the concern did not disappear when RP9 disappeared.

In July 2026, the Supreme Court ordered the presidents of 21 political parties to explain any involvement they had in defining, distributing, or operationalizing congressional amendments, specifically as part of efforts to improve transparency and traceability.

The Court has also emphasized an important principle in later proceedings:

changing the label does not make an opaque practice constitutional.

That idea matters.

Democracy cannot become a competition to find a technically legal name for the next black box.

When Organized Crime Stops Running From the State

There is a simplified image of organized crime: criminals hiding from the police and operating outside institutions.

More sophisticated criminal organizations may seek something far more valuable:

entry into the institutions themselves.

Into the formal economy.

Companies.

Funds.

Contracts.

Campaigns.

Political parties.

Public administrations.

And, eventually, proximity to those who write the rules.

The risk is concrete enough that Brazil’s Electoral Public Prosecutor’s Office issued recommendations in 2026 urging political parties to establish integrity, governance, and oversight systems specifically designed to prevent organized crime from infiltrating the electoral process.

This does not justify saying that the Brazilian Congress belongs to organized crime.

That would be false.

But it supports a less comfortable conclusion:

Powerful economic groups and criminal organizations have an incentive to influence the institutions that establish the limits of their activities.

And the Banco Master case made that discussion much less abstract.

Banco Master: When an Investigation Reaches Those Who Write the Rules

In investigations involving Banco Master, Brazil’s Federal Police began examining a proposal introduced by Senator Ciro Nogueira that would have increased the ordinary coverage of the Credit Guarantee Fund, the FGC, from R$ 250,000 to R$ 1 million.

According to Federal Police findings cited in judicial proceedings and reported by the press, the text may have been drafted by Banco Master’s own advisers and then delivered for introduction in the Senate.

Ciro Nogueira denies having engaged in illegal conduct and has challenged aspects of the investigation. The original proposal was ultimately rejected.

We are therefore discussing an investigation, not a final conviction.

But the allegation under investigation is extremely relevant to any democracy.

One thing is to look for a loophole in a rule.

Another is to try to make the loophole larger.

The most dangerous stage of an illicit interest may not be when it asks, “How can I escape the law?” It may be when it begins asking, “How can I get closer to those who make the law?”

That is why lobbying, legislative drafting, and economic interests also need transparency.

Not because speaking to lawmakers is inherently criminal.

But because citizens should be able to know who participated in constructing a rule and who stood to benefit economically from it.

And When the Money Belongs to Retirees?

The Banco Master case also reached RioPrevidência, the pension fund for public employees in the state of Rio de Janeiro.

Federal Police are investigating approximately R$ 3.6 billion in pension resources invested in financial notes and funds related to Banco Master.

RioPrevidência manages resources associated with retirement and benefit payments for more than 235,000 active and retired public employees.

According to the judicial ruling authorizing investigative measures, investigators identified indications of political involvement in making some of those investments possible.

These are matters under investigation, not final convictions.

Consider the nature of this money.

It was not simply speculative capital belonging to someone willing to take a financial risk.

It was wealth connected to public employees’ retirement.

Then it entered the financial system.

Financial notes.

Structured funds.

Asset managers.

Companies.

Intermediaries.

And as more layers appear, answering an elementary question can become increasingly difficult:

Where did each portion of the money ultimately go?

Did Retirees’ Money Finance Dark Horse?

This is exactly where intellectual rigor becomes essential.

Based on the information publicly available as of August 20, 2026, we cannot state that RioPrevidência resources were used to finance the film Dark Horse.

There is not enough public evidence to make that claim.

And we should not turn it into an accusation.

What we know is different.

Flávio Bolsonaro acknowledged contacting Daniel Vorcaro while seeking financing for the film about Jair Bolsonaro. Publicly reported information about the negotiations indicates that Vorcaro transferred approximately R$ 61 million toward the production. Flávio Bolsonaro denies offering any improper consideration in return.

A private forensic report commissioned by the production company’s defense stated that Dark Horse cost approximately R$ 75 million and that the documents it examined did not identify public funds among the resources used.

According to that report, funds came from the U.S.-based Havengate fund.

However, the report itself limits its conclusions to the material provided to the private experts, while Federal Police were still examining mechanisms for accessing information protected by the fund’s confidentiality.

There is another piece of the puzzle.

Financial intelligence reports from Brazil’s Coaf, analyzed by the press, indicated that the Gold Style fund, managed by Reag, carried out transactions with Entre Investimentos, a company used in transfers related to the film.

The same fund also appeared in transactions involving other companies under investigation.

According to the Coaf material reported by the press, layered structures made it more difficult to identify final beneficiaries and trace certain transactions.

And this is the central point:

Today, we cannot say that public employees’ pension money financed Dark Horse. But an ordinary citizen also does not have access to a single, complete public trail capable of following all these resources from beginning to end through funds, companies, assets, and jurisdictions.

That is very different from accusing someone.

In fact, it is precisely an argument for evidence instead of accusation.

Because weak traceability harms both sides.

It makes wrongdoing harder to prove.

And it makes false suspicion harder to definitively eliminate.

Transparency Also Protects the Innocent

Imagine an infrastructure capable of answering:

“Did any portion of these pension resources reach this particular fund?”

Yes or no.

“Did any portion of that fund ultimately reach this investment?”

Yes or no.

“Did this company receive money whose origin was public?”

Yes or no.

The answer would not depend solely on believing a politician.

Nor on believing an opponent’s accusation.

Nor on reconstructing thousands of pages years later.

The financial trail itself could answer.

Transparency is not only a tool for finding corrupt actors.

It also protects those who were not involved in corruption.

The honest public manager.

The legitimate company.

The legitimate fund.

The politician who was falsely accused.

The investor.

The retiree.

The stronger the trail, the less room there is both to conceal crime and to manufacture guilt without evidence.

Financial Markets Need Confidentiality. But Public Money Cannot Disappear Inside It.

It would be false to say that Brazil’s financial system lacks oversight.

There is the Central Bank.

The Securities and Exchange Commission, CVM.

Coaf.

Auditors.

Compliance departments.

Bank secrecy regulated by law.

Anti-money laundering rules.

Financial privacy is an important right.

The problem arises when structures designed to protect legitimate confidentiality also make it extraordinarily difficult to identify the ultimate economic beneficiary and the origin of certain funds.

In the Gold Style case, for example, press reports based on Coaf materials referred to confidential private debentures and structures in which it was difficult to publicly identify the people ultimately behind certain transactions.

Perhaps we therefore need a very simple principle:

Private money deserves privacy. Public money requires memory.

And we can add:

Public pension money requires memory.

Public subsidies require memory.

Tax expenditures require memory.

Public guarantees require memory.

Eletrozema Shows That Money Does Not Always Need to Leave the Treasury

Return to the Romeu Zema example.

The State did not necessarily make a direct bank transfer of R$ 2.28 million to Eletrozema.

The benefit occurred through the tax system.

The State gave up tax revenue through a presumed ICMS credit.

That demonstrates why transparency cannot be limited to money directly paid by the Treasury.

We also need to follow decisions such as:

Who received the tax benefit?

How much did they avoid paying?

Under which rule?

For how long?

Which authority supervised it?

What economic return justified the benefit?

The Minas Gerais government maintains that the tax treatment granted to Eletrozema followed sector-wide rules and was unrelated to Zema’s ownership interest.

That is exactly why transparency from the beginning would have been useful: citizens could have verified that claim without waiting for a judicial decision before learning who the beneficiaries were.

When a decision is correct, transparency strengthens its legitimacy. When it is not, transparency helps reveal it.

This Is Where Drex Can Change the Question

One correction is essential.

Drex does not currently track all Brazilian money.

The Central Bank’s project remains under development.

But one technological feature is important.

The Central Bank itself has stated that a distributed-ledger infrastructure such as that being studied for Drex can provide a high degree of auditability, traceability, and transparency, creating new tools for supervision and regulation.

This is where the BrainLatam proposal begins.

Not with turning Brazil into a surveillance system for every private purchase.

But with building a radically more transparent layer whenever the origin of the resource is public.

Public Money Could Carry Its Own History

Imagine R$ 1 billion belonging to a public pension fund.

It enters an investment.

Record.

It goes into a fund.

Linked record.

The fund buys another asset.

Record.

The asset is traded.

Record.

Part of the money reaches a company.

Record.

The company transfers resources to another institution.

The trail continues.

Part crosses Brazil’s border.

Within Brazilian jurisdiction, the origin, institution, foreign-exchange operation, stated justification, and declared counterparty remain recorded.

This does not mean assigning a serial number to every real.

The architecture could digitally connect assets, tokens, rights, contracts, funds, and public purposes.

Money can change its representation.

Its public origin should not disappear.

And Fraud?

Fraud would continue to exist.

Technology does not turn a corrupt person into an honest one.

There could still be:

shell companies,

overpricing,

false invoices,

straw owners,

collusion,

altered documents.

But there is an enormous difference.

Today, a complex investigation may need to reconstruct dozens or hundreds of separate relationships years later.

With an architecture designed around traceability, a significant part of that history would already have been recorded when the transactions occurred.

The more layers someone creates to hide money, the more records and inconsistencies they may need to generate.

Fraud would not disappear.

It would have to confront the trail.

Brazil Already Has an Example of This Logic

Brazil’s Office of the Comptroller General, the CGU, uses a tool called Alice to automatically analyze public procurement and bidding documents.

In 2024, the system reviewed more than 118,000 procurement processes, directed 214 audits involving R$ 26.17 billion, and the CGU reported approximately R$ 1.25 billion in financial benefits resulting from preventive actions.

Artificial intelligence does not arrest anyone.

It does not judge anyone.

It does not replace the courts.

But it can see patterns that would be extraordinarily difficult to identify manually.

Now imagine that capability connected to a much more structured financial trail for public-origin resources.

Because Governments Change

There is another reason why this must be institutional rather than partisan.

Lula will not govern forever.

Neither will Flávio Bolsonaro.

Nor Zema.

Nor Caiado.

Nor any candidate in this election.

Presidents come and go.

Congress changes.

Heads of regulatory agencies are replaced.

Political priorities change.

But the trail should remain.

Fighting corruption cannot depend on having the right leader at the right moment.

The system must be able to audit even the person who temporarily controls the system.

The Question That Should Survive Every 2026 Election Result

Lula, Flávio Bolsonaro, Romeu Zema, Ronaldo Caiado, Renan Santos, Augusto Cury, Clariana Barão, Edmilson Costa, Hertz Dias, Rui Costa Pimenta, Samara Martins, Wilson Grassi, and Pablo Marçal present profoundly different visions of the State.

Some want to reduce it.

Others want to expand it.

Some favor privatization.

Others nationalization.

Some want lower taxes.

Others greater State participation in the financial system.

But none of those differences erase one fact:

Corruption can exist under any model.

It finds fertile ground when three elements can combine:

money, power, and opacity.

That is why one principle should survive every election:

No president, legislator, political party, bank, fund, company, or organization should be able to transform public money into money without a history.

If it enters a fund, it leaves a record.

If it leaves, it leaves a record.

If it moves to another fund, the trail continues.

If someone receives a subsidy, we know who received it.

If someone receives a tax benefit, we know how much revenue the State gave up.

If money crosses borders, we know under which operation it left the country.

If it funded an infrastructure project, we can find the project.

If it belonged to a pension system, we can follow the assets.

And when the question arises:

“Did this money ultimately finance something for which it was never intended?”

the State’s answer should not depend on political faith.

Not on the left.

Not on the right.

It should depend on evidence.

Perhaps the greatest democratic potential of digital money is not that it can move faster.

Perhaps it is that it can make it increasingly difficult to steal, conceal, fragment, or erase the history of public money.

Governments change.

Terms end.

Laws change.

Funds change names.

Companies change owners.

But money belonging to society should not acquire the right to lose its memory.

Its history is also a public asset.

Main References

• Superior Electoral Court, TSE. DivulgaCandContas, open electoral data, presidential candidacies, declared assets, and government programs for the 2026 election.

• Reporting and published documentation on the 13 registered presidential candidacies and their respective government proposals.

• TSE asset declarations for the 2026 presidential candidates, including the corrected declaration filed by Pablo Marçal.

• Poder360 and Folha de S.Paulo reporting on approximately R$ 2.28 million in ICMS presumed credits granted to Eletrozema, the Minas Gerais government’s explanation, and the history of disclosure of state tax expenditures.

• Federal Supreme Court, STF. Decisions declaring the RP9 “secret budget” mechanism unconstitutional and subsequent actions to increase transparency and traceability of congressional amendments.

• Electoral Public Prosecutor’s Office. 2026 recommendations aimed at preventing the infiltration of organized criminal groups into parties and the electoral process.

• Federal Police and judicial investigations concerning the proposed increase in FGC coverage associated with the Banco Master case and allegations regarding the drafting of the proposal.

• Agência Brasil. Investigation of approximately R$ 3.6 billion in RioPrevidência resources invested in structures related to Banco Master.

• Public investigations and reporting concerning approximately R$ 61 million associated with the financing of Dark Horse, as well as Havengate, Gold Style, Reag, and other intermediary financial structures.

• Central Bank of Brazil. Drex technical references concerning distributed ledger technology, auditability, traceability, transparency, tokenization, and smart contracts.

• Office of the Comptroller General, CGU. 2024 results of the Alice automated public-procurement monitoring system.