Agreement needs to be approved by the Court; 2.16 million people can already ask for compensation
The AGU (General Advocacy of the Union) presented this Wednesday (2.Jul.2025) to the Supreme Court (STF) a conciliation agreement to reimburse the victims of INSS fraud.
The agreement is signed by the Ministry of Social Security, DPU (Public Defender of the Union), MPF (Federal Public Prosecution Service) and Federal Council of OAB (Brazilian Bar Association). Now the Supreme Court needs to approve the agreement. The case is under the rapporteur of Minister Dias Toffoli, in an action proposed by the government itself. Read the full agreement (PDF – 2 MB).
The agreement has as a target audience the retirees and pensioners who had improper discounts from March 2020 to March 2025. AGU said that about 2.16 million people can already apply for their reimburses. This amount corresponds to the total number of people who presented some kind of contestation regarding discounts, by official government channels and were unanswered by the associative entities that would have committed the discounts.
People who sign the agreement to receive the money administratively will have their lawsuits extinct. With this, the possibility of payment of indemnity for moral damages against the INSS is removed.
In all, the INSS received 3.6 million contestation. Of this total, 828,000 cases received a response from the associations that, in turn, presented the documents to prove that the discounts were authorized. This portion will not yet be included in the program.
The government said it will return fully, with correction by the IPCA (National Consumer Price Index), the discounted amounts, from the month in which each discount occurred to the date of its effective inclusion in the payroll. According to AGU, more details about the reimbursement schedule will be released when the STF approves the plan.
In a conciliation hearing at the Court on the subject, INSS President Gilberto Waller estimated that the potential impact of payment if all suspicious cases are really fraudulent is $ 2.1 billion. According to him, payments should start on July 24 and payment will be made in lots every 15 days. At the time, however, he stated that the initial lead would reach 1.5 million people.
The agreement
According to the plan proposed by the government, the adhesion period will be defined as soon as the agreement is approved by the Supreme Court. From this, the victims of fraud may request the reimbursement for the following channels:
- application “My INSS”;
- Call Center, by phone 135;
- face -to -face care at the post office agencies; and
- active search actions in rural areas or difficult to access.
The same service channels are available until November to receive requests for contestation of improper discounts. If the fraud is proven, the return can be done by the Association itself within 15 days, unless you present documents proving that there was authorization for the discount.
In such cases, the beneficiary must file a lawsuit to resolve the controversy and it will not be possible to receive the money directly without court order.
The agreement also states that the Transparency Portal has updated information on the total number of requests per state, the list of entities involved, the amounts already returned by the entities and a general balance of the contestations, with the indication of the results.
Finally, the INSS should also revise and adapt internal regulations and procedures to prevent new fraud, such as biometric or electronic authorization, the creation of an automated complaint monitoring system and automatic discount suspension of contested discounts. Also, in 180 days, the institute should implement educational programs.
The professor at the FGV (Getúlio Vargas Foundation) Research Center and Economics Rio, Luis Felipe Lopes Martins, evaluated as positive the government plan, but said that there is a risk that a high number of beneficiaries did not dispute discounts compared to the number presented in the study of CGU (Comptroller General of the Union), which raised the operation without discount, to investigate the case in May.
The investigation estimated a loss of R $ 6.5 billion in undue discounts on pensions from 2019 to 2024.
“At this point, I think it is very important to see that the INSS itself recognizes that there are categories that are more vulnerable, which will not be able to make this contest on their own and it establishes this possibility of a letter contestation.”declared Martins.
STF ACTION
The government of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (PT) filed a lawsuit in the Supreme Court to suspend the lawsuits that asked for compensation against the INSS. The request was denied by Toffoli who, instead, determined the suspension of the prescription period.
The AGU also requested the opening of extraordinary credit to ensure compensation to the victims. The spending would be out of the tax framework, when they would not count on the goal of the public deficit.
In the plan sent to the Supreme Court, the government reiterated the request for precautionary measure to authorize the opening of extraordinary credit through a provisional measure, so that the reimbursements are made in July.
“The granting of precautionary measures is indispensable so that it is possible to comply with the administrative reimbursement schedule, whose first batch of payment, in case of approval of the agreement, may already be made from July 24”wrote the AGU.
