Interim Sports Minister takes office under suspicion.
Waldemar Souza, a trusted man of the PCdoB (Communist Party of Brazil), also signed several agreements with NGOs that are under investigation.
Appointed as interim Minister of Sport after the dismissal of Orlando Silva, the ministry's executive secretary, Waldemar Souza, signed agreements with non-governmental organizations suspected of irregularities.
A member of the Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB) in Rio de Janeiro, Souza was the one who signed the R$ 6,2 million contract with a union of football officials for a project related to the 2014 World Cup, as revealed in a report by the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo published in August.
Waldemar Souza is part of the PCdoB's group within the ministry. He is a trusted man of Minister Orlando Silva. The executive secretary's name appears, for example, in the extension of an agreement for the Second Time Program worth R$ 911 with the Institute for the Development of Children and Adolescents (Idec), in the city of Novo Gama (GO).
The renewal was published on August 25th of this year in the Official Gazette of the Union. The entity is a front and, despite having signed the contract in 2009, never executed the project. After the newspaper revealed the case, the ministry announced that it had decided to cancel the contract.
On January 25, 2011, Waldemar Souza also signed an agreement for R$ 1,2 million with the Instituto Pró-Ação, another entity under suspicion. And it doesn't stop there. On November 30, 2010, the executive secretary appears as responsible for a new agreement, worth R$ 2,4 million, with the Instituto Cidade, from Minas Gerais.
The organization, which received R$ 9 million in the last four years, is linked to the Secretary of Educational Sports, Wadson Ribeiro. It is based in the city of Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, where Wadson is a pre-candidate for mayor in 2012 for the PCdoB party. He, incidentally, was Waldemar Souza's predecessor in the Executive Secretariat of the ministry.
Wadson, former president of the National Union of Students and also a figure in suspicious agreements, remains in office. He returned to the ministry in March after losing the elections for federal deputy in 2010. The newspaper Estado de S. Paulo revealed today that the secretary received R$ 33,5 in relocation expenses upon returning to the government in March of this year.