Understanding Bolsonaro’s ‘secret budget’ scandal

For the first time since taking office in 2019, President Jair Bolsonaro has been directly implicated in a corruption scandal. Last week, journalist Breno Pires revealed the government had created a “secret budget” that included BRL 3 billion (USD 565 million) in priority expenses for a select group of lawmakers, included by way of a little-understood mechanism known as “rapporteur-designated budgetary grants.”

But the Brazilian media has done a poor job of explaining exactly why Mr. Bolsonaro’s secret budget is illegal. 

Rapporteur-designated budgetary grants are not new to Brazilian politics, first being used in 1946. Indeed, as political scientist Sergio Praça wrote last week, they are informal and not transparent — but not illegal per se. 

But the devil is in the details. While the grants themselves are not illicit, how the government intends to use them may well be. 

Explaining budgetary grants in the government’s secret budget

Budgetary grants are a constitutional provision preventing the executive branch from having monopoly control over the federal budget. Legislators typically use them to fund healthcare or infrastructure projects, often in their own constituencies. Per congressional rules, individual lawmakers, state caucuses, and the congressional budget committee can request these grants.

However, Mr. Bolsonaro’s secret budget was hidden beneath an...