Brazil's federal prosecution service, the MPF, and the prosecutors' offices of seven states were still breaking until Thursday (24) a rule from the CNMP, the National Council of the Public Prosecutor's Office, which oversees the country's prosecutors, that requires open disclosure of their earnings. The finding comes from a survey by the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo published on Saturday (26), and the gaps affect the name-by-name, itemized publication of indemnity payments and payroll perks, known in Brazil as penduricalhos, which the paper says makes public scrutiny of inflated salaries harder.

The rule traces to CNMP Resolution 338/2026, dated Aug 26 according to Folha and published in the council's electronic gazette on Sept 15. It revoked a provision inserted in 2023 into the regulation of Brazil's freedom of information law within the prosecution service (Resolution 89/2012) that let prosecutors' offices demand personal identification, through a CPF tax ID or a GovBR account, from anyone trying to look up individual, named pay data of members and staff. The council itself concluded the requirement violated the constitutional principles of publicity and administrative transparency and created obstacles to social oversight and press freedom in checking public spending.

Detailed disclosure is not demanded by the CNMP alone. Normative Instruction 84/2020 of the TCU, the federal accounts court, requires itemized publication of salaries, subsidies, allowances, travel stipends, board fees and other payments to active and retired public servants and pensioners. This year the council also issued Resolution 334/2026, which makes standardized payroll categories and a single pay slip mandatory across all branches of the prosecution service.

How the case got here

• 2023: the CNMP issues Resolution 281/2023, creating a personal data protection policy for the prosecution service and conditioning access to pay data on prior identification of the requester.
• Aug 14, 2026: the Supreme Federal Court's virtual plenary begins hearing ADI 7.892, filed by Abraji against the requirement.
• Aug 17, 2026: the court suspends its analysis of the requirement, according to Consultor Jurídico.
• Aug 26, 2026: the CNMP's plenary approves Resolution 338/2026, proposed by the national inspector of the prosecution service, counselor Fernando Comin; the norm was published on Sept 15.
• Sept 24, 2026: Folha finds the MPF and prosecutors' offices in seven states still failing to comply.

What each side says

The identification requirement reached the Supreme Federal Court (STF) through ADI 7.892, a suit filed by Abraji, the Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism, challenging provisions of Resolution 281/2023, among them article 172, under which individual and named pay information would only be released after the requester identified themselves. The group argues the rule creates obstacles to public oversight, has a chilling effect on investigative journalism and allows harassment and abusive lawsuits against reporters. The reporting justice, Gilmar Mendes, voted to uphold the suit and declare the provision unconstitutional: conditioning access on identification, he wrote, turns active transparency into passive transparency and makes each search "visible and traceable" by the very institution under scrutiny.

In his opinion, as reported by Migalhas, Mendes said the freedom of information law and Brazil's data protection law, the LGPD, do not clash. "The two regimes do not exclude each other: they harmonize systematically, each delimiting the field of application of the other," he wrote. He cited the court's Topic 483 ruling, which held that publishing civil servants' names, wages and benefits is legitimate, with safeguards such as omitting CPF numbers and home addresses. According to Consultor Jurídico, the justice also flagged other measures on prosecutors' websites, beyond identification, that restrict access to information.

The STF case remains open. Its analysis was suspended on Aug 17, according to Consultor Jurídico, and no date to resume had been announced as of Saturday. Meanwhile, Resolution 338/2026 has been in force since Sept 15, and the CNMP's official announcement sets no deadline for offices to comply, leaving open when the MPF and the seven state offices will publish complete pay data.