The São Paulo state prosecutor's office has opened a new front in its investigation into alleged irregularities in the street lighting contract of Brazil's largest city, valued at R$ 6.9 billion. In a dispatch issued on Thursday (20), prosecutors specializing in public assets demanded explanations from the city attorney general, Luciana Sant'Ana Nardi, for allegedly creating obstacles to compliance with rulings by the Superior Court of Justice (STJ) and the Supreme Federal Court (STF) that would lead to the cancellation of the current contract, Folha de S.Paulo reported.
The administration of mayor Ricardo Nunes, of the centrist MDB party, told the newspaper it executes the contract regularly and will provide all necessary clarifications to the courts once formally notified.
The contract with the Ilumina SP consortium, made up of construction firms FM Rodrigues and CLD Construtora, came out of a tender concluded in 2018 and covers lighting services for 20 years. In a case closed in December 2024, the Supreme Court found that the tender had irregularly disqualified the Walks consortium, whose bid was about R$ 1.3 billion cheaper. In 2022, already under Nunes, an amendment signed without a new tender added traffic light services to the contract at a cost of R$ 3.8 billion.
Prosecutors estimate that keeping the contract they consider irregular has caused accumulated losses of R$ 513 million through July of this year, including payments already made. Based on that figure, the São Paulo state court (TJ-SP) ordered on August 14 the freezing of about R$ 1 billion in assets belonging to former public officials and the companies involved, the sum of the alleged loss plus a fine of equal value. On Thursday (20), appeals court justice Borelli Thomaz, of the 13th Public Law Chamber, rejected a challenge by the companies and upheld the freeze, set at R$ 1,026,618,672.72, according to g1.
Alleged favoritism
Investigators point to alleged favoritism toward the winning consortium in the international tender opened in 2015. According to g1, an internal inquiry by the city's comptroller general, concluded in January 2020, found "robust and converging indications" that staff at Ilume, the municipal lighting department, acted to disqualify the Walks consortium before the commercial bids were opened. The department's then director, Denise Maria Ayres de Abreu, is suspected of receiving monthly payments from FM Rodrigues, a suspicion reinforced by audio recordings from 2017. She is among the targets of the asset freeze, alongside former municipal services and works secretary Marcos Rodrigues Penido and João Manoel da Costa Neto, chief executive of the regulator SP Regula.
In a statement, Penido said he will present a technical defense and provide all necessary clarifications. Ilumina SP said the points raised by prosecutors had already been investigated in the past, when the concessionaire provided all clarifications.