The Office of the Comptroller General (CGU) ordered on Wednesday (Aug. 26, 2026) that the Federal Attorney General’s Office (AGU) provide Transparência Brasil (TB) with the complete database of attorneys’ fees paid to government attorneys. The decision overturns an attempt by the AGU to reverse the same order, issued in May, and grants two requests for access to information filed by TB in September of last year. The decision must be complied with within 30 days.

“The requests are about to reach one year in the system, well beyond all the deadlines established by the Access to Information Act (LAI). The AGU has repeatedly refused to provide information essential for the public to monitor these payments. There is no longer any justification for this data not to be made available at last,” says Juliana Sakai, executive director of Transparência Brasil.

Fees totaled R$ 12.7 billion between January 2020 and August 2025, according to a joint study by TB and the Movimento Pessoas à Frente published in December 2025, and are made possible by critical flaws in control and governance, as the organizations pointed out in a follow-upstudy published six months later.

The data available on the Transparency Portal is aggregated, making it impossible to verify the portion of each benefit funded by these fees. The AGU publishes more detailed information in a dashboard, but imposes barriers to comprehensive searches and does not allow the full dataset to be downloaded.

Transparência Brasil requested the data via the LAI eleven months ago, through two requests: one on Sept. 11, 2025, for the full data from the “fee breakdown” tab on the dashboard; and another on Sept. 24, 2025, for information on fee entries in Siape.

The AGU denied both requests in its initial responses and in two appeal proceedings. On Nov. 25, 2025, Transparência Brasil appealed to the CGU. The appeal was pending for six months, exceeding the time limit set forth in the LAI. On May 25, 2026, the CGU ruled in favor of releasing the data. The AGU stated at the time that it would review its position and send the data within one month.

On June 24, 2026, however, the acting chief justice of the AGU, Flavio José Roman, asked the CGU to review the decision that the agency had already committed to complying with.

In its request for review, the AGU argues that the disclosure of the database would result in “excessive scrutiny of the financial lives” of civil servants and could potentially lead to “misinterpretations” and damage the agency’s “institutional image.” These arguments are weak but dangerous: if accepted, they would trigger a cascade of salary information being withheld across federal agencies, with the potential to impact other branches of government and subnational entities. 

On Aug. 11, TB and 14 other civil society organizations filed a joint letter with the Minister of the Office of the Comptroller General (CGU), Vinícius Marques de Carvalho, asking the CGU to deny the request for review submitted by the AGU. In addition to Transparência Brasil, the document was signed by: Movimento Pessoas à Frente, Livres, Associação Fiquem Sabendo, Open Knowledge Brasil, República.org, Contas Abertas, CLP (Centro de Liderança Pública), Plataforma JUSTA, and Transparency International – Brazil, ARTICLE 19, Instituto OPS, Base dos Dados, Central das Emendas, and the Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism (Abraji).

In Wednesday’s decision, the CGU stated that “any determination regarding the need to restrict access must strictly adhere to the cases provided for by law; it is not permissible to impose limitations based on generic considerations regarding the usefulness, convenience, or purpose of access.”

The CGU also noted that “the public interest in disclosure stems not only from the nature of the funds but also from the need to allow for the monitoring and oversight of how resources resulting from government action are managed and distributed.”