Bolsonaro tried to seal his wife’s charity grants. They are now becoming public

For almost ten months, The Brazilian Report has battled for transparency regarding First Lady Michelle Bolsonaro’s philanthropic grants for non-profit and religious organizations distributed through the National Program to Encourage Volunteering (‘Pátria Voluntária’). The program funnels money directly to charitable institutions. Once available through a dashboard on the program’s website, the data on donors, amounts, and grantees has vanished. 

Up until this July, the program had dished out BRL 12.9 million (USD 2.4 million), according to the federal government.  

To find the recipients of the money, it is now necessary to dig through data on a low-quality PDF file, the program’s bi-annual report. And even then, essential information has been left out of the document, such as the recipients’ identification numbers, the date of the grants, and the program’s donors. 

According to the report, over BRL 830,000 (USD 157,450) donated by the program for Covid emergency initiatives in 2020 have still not been accounted for. 

In response to a freedom of information request filed by The Brazilian Report, the Federal Comptroller’s Office ordered the office of President Jair Bolsonaro’s chief of staff, Ciro Nogueira, to disclose full details of the first...