In Mesquita, a working-class city in Rio de Janeiro's Baixada Fluminense, part of the public health system runs through an institute that Brazil's federal tax service has classified as "nonexistent in fact", a company that, in the eyes of the authorities, does not really exist at all. It was for this city, governed by the PL party, that Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, now running for president, set aside in 2024 a budget earmark of R$ 3.1 million for basic health care. An investigation by UOL, republished on Thursday (8) by Folha de S.Paulo, found that funds directed by the senator paid companies investigated by the Federal Police for suspected cartel activity, an entity suspected of tax fraud and an institute whose funding was negotiated by a militiaman convicted in the Marielle Franco case.
Since 2020, more than R$ 300 million (roughly US$ 56 million) has been reserved in the federal budget for Flávio Bolsonaro's earmarks, the allocations Brazilian lawmakers send to state and local governments. The reporting traced the companies and entities hired by the public bodies that received the money. Asked for comment, the senator said he does not choose the companies that receive the funds he sends to beneficiaries.
A "nonexistent" institute and firms under police investigation
In Mesquita's case, R$ 666,000 from the earmark was paid in August 2025 to the Instituto de Medicina e Projeto (IMP), which the tax service classified in June this year as "nonexistent in fact". According to a document from the agency cited in the reporting, there are "reasons showing that the company was set up to commit tax fraud, including for the benefit of third-party companies". The IMP, hired by several Rio municipalities to run public health services, has been under scrutiny by the Rio de Janeiro state audit court since 2024. Mesquita alone signed contracts worth more than R$ 580 million with the entity between 2019 and the end of 2024, according to documents reviewed by UOL, which also found earmarks from three other lawmakers, from the PL, PSDB and PSD parties, used to pay the institute's expenses in the city.
Another share of the money flowed to agreements between the Rio state government and companies investigated by the Federal Police. Glágio do Brasil received R$ 569,000 between May and June this year, and Inbra-Tecnologia received R$ 1.1 million under the same agreement. Both appear in an investigation into suspected fraud in bidding for ballistic protection equipment, with signs of split public contracts and rigged outcomes. Glágio and a company from the Inbra group were targeted by search warrants in Operação Perfídia, launched in September 2023 and still under seal.
A militiaman, a Vasco da Gama project and a small-town airport
The investigation also points to a R$ 200,000 earmark to the Instituto de Formação Profissional José Carlos Procópio (IFOP), for a sports project in Taquara, in Rio's west zone. Messages revealed by Estadão and cited by UOL show Robson Calixto, known as Peixe and convicted in the murder of Rio councilwoman Marielle Franco in 2018, discussing the release of the funds with an aide to the senator.
Two other earmarks drew the attention of oversight bodies. One of R$ 4 million, sent in 2025 to a sports project linked to the Vasco da Gama football club, came under review by the federal comptroller's office: according to information published by UOL columnist Juca Kfouri, R$ 684,000, or 93% of the spending already made on the project, went to a single supplier, a one-person micro-company registered in a commercial room in Sapopemba, on São Paulo's east side. An earmark sent to the municipality of Resende, meanwhile, resulted in nine payments to a company called Valle Sul, totaling R$ 6.61 million, for renovation works at the small municipal airport.
The findings land in the middle of the runoff campaign, in which Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, faces Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) for the presidency. In Mesquita, where the money trail begins, the basic health units keep operating under contracts the tax service and the audit court have already questioned, while the path of the earmarks keeps being reconstructed, document by document, in the public pages of the federal budget.