Brazil’s Senate on Tuesday cast a vote to approve conservative President Jair Bolsonaro’s announcement to patch up the executive branch, deflecting a potential emergency that had sown uncertainty about his capacity to get the congressional backing he needs to push through legislation.
The Senate also voted to keep the Council for Financial Activities Control (COAF) under the auspices of the economy ministry. Control of the COAF, which tracks suspicious funds flowing through the financial system, became a hot-button issue and threatened to derail Bolsonaro’s ministry-slashing decree, reports Reuters.
Inability to get congressional endorsement would have gambled tossing Bolsonaro’s young government into an emergency, extending worries about the destiny of a driven benefits change bill – the foundation of his monetary plan.
Bolsonaro issued the pronouncement the day he got down to business in January to slice the number of services to 22 from 29. That was set to terminate one week from now on the off chance that it was not affirmed by officials.
But his own PSL party had planned to vote against the decree in the Senate because they were unhappy that it had been revised by the lower house to keep the COAF anti-graft unit in the economy ministry – out of the control of Justice Minister Sergio Moro, a former federal judge who jailed political and business high-fliers in the “Car Wash” probe.
Congressperson Major Olimpio, the PSL pioneer in the Senate, had needed the COAF to be under Moro as an apparatus for tracking money laundering in the financial framework.
Be that as it may, he altered his perspective subsequent to meeting with Bolsonaro. Olimpio said Moro and Economy Minister Paulo Guedes, who is driving the annuity change exertion, likewise requested that he down.
“In view of the requests by the president, Moro and Guedes, we cannot put the government reorganization in danger and the PSL will vote to keep the COAF at the Economy Ministry,” Olimpio told reporters earlier on Tuesday.
Moro, visiting Portugal, said he was disappointed his ministry would lose the COAF, but said it was a democratic decision by Congress.
Besides, he told reporters in Estoril, “we can’t allow the whole government reorganization to be lost because of the COAF.”
