An audit by Brazil's federal audit court (TCU) estimates that the government may have paid out as much as R$ 3 billion improperly in the seguro-defeso, a benefit for artisanal fishers, in 2024. That is the equivalent of a full year's minimum wage (R$ 1,621 a month in 2026) paid about 154,000 times over. In practical terms, it means public money meant for fishers may have gone to people who were not entitled to it.

The estimate appears in a report obtained by the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo. Auditors compared the number of beneficiaries in official records with an estimate, drawn from the national household survey (Pnad Contínua, run by statistics agency IBGE), of artisanal fishers for whom the benefit was their only source of income.

How the TCU reached the number

In 2024, there were 1.1 million beneficiaries in the program's administrative database. The household survey estimated that 579,700 people could be eligible for the benefit, meaning the official registry was roughly 93% larger than the surveyed population.

That same year, the government paid R$ 5.8 billion in seguro-defeso. By cross-checking databases, auditors found 101,200 benefits with signs of irregularity, with a direct potential financial impact of R$ 654 million, or 11.2% of the total paid. The R$ 3 billion figure is a broader estimate of the possible scale of the problem, beyond those flagged cases.

What is the seguro-defeso? It is a monthly payment of one minimum wage to artisanal fishers during the closed season, when fishing a given species is banned to let stocks recover. The goal is to protect fish populations while guaranteeing income to workers temporarily barred from fishing.

The audit, which reviewed the granting of the benefit from registration to payment, will be reported at the court by Justice Augusto Nardes. The information in this article comes from Folha de S.Paulo, which obtained the document exclusively.