Brazil's Minister of the Special Secretariat for the Promotion of Racial Equality Policies Matilde Ribeiro resigned on Friday following a scandal involving personal expenses sponsored by the federal government.
Ribeiro, whose expenses are entirely backed by the government, was charged with using recklessly her corporative cards, According to the local press, the minister spent an average of 14,200 reals (about 8,160 U.S. dollars) per month with the cards in 2007, 14 times as much as the average spent by other ministers.
The case is undergoing investigation of the government's general controller department and by the public ethics committee.
One of the facts that led to the investigations on the administration of Ribeiro's cards was that she allegedly spent a total of 118,000 reals (about 67,800 U.S. dollars) renting cars last year, always hiring the same rent-a-car agency. That amount would be enough to buy two vehicles of the same model as the one she usually rode in her official trips.
Additionally, the controller department explained that Ribeiro should have held a public bidding process with service providers instead of using the services from the same provider constantly.
In her defense, the minister pointed out that she ran a special secretariat in the government, which did not rely on branches in the several states of the country that she had to visit. She stressed that two members of her team, who took care of the secretariat's financial department, were also to blame for the excessive expenditure registered in the corporative cards.
The two public servants, Carlos Eduardo Trindade and Antonio Silva Pinto, were fired on Thursday.
"A mistake is a mistake, and it happened to me," she admitted at a press conference on Friday.
Ribeiro will be replaced by Deputy Secretary Martvs das Chagas, who worked with her at the secretariat.
Source: Xinhua
|
Comment
Tell A Friend
Print Format
Save Article