Operation targets BRB, DF Treasury Secretariat and Pic&Pay over payroll discount scheme

Brazilian police are carrying out 50 search and seizure warrants in Brasília, São Paulo (SP) and Curitiba (PR) as part of Operação Juros Zero, which focuses on a payroll-linked scheme involving the Banco de Brasília (BRB), the DF Treasury Secretariat, the DF civil servants’ pension institute Iprev, Pic&Pay and the DF Public Servants Association. For payment and payroll providers, the detail that matters is simple: the alleged structure sits inside government payroll flows, where deductions are easy to hide and hard to unwind once they are embedded in the system.

1. The investigation says the suspects relied on a 2024 district decree that had already been created for the alleged scheme. According to the report, they used payroll deductions to amortize transactions without charging interest, while Pic&Pay, part of the J&F group, took over the DF government payroll and then allegedly charged “disguised interest.”
2. BRB is described as the bank responsible for the payments. The other named targets are the DF Treasury Secretariat, Iprev, Pic&Pay and the Association of Public Servants of the Federal District. The reporting says attempts were being made to contact the targets of the operation.
3. A court has frozen almost R$ 90 million in accounts belonging to Pic&Pay and the Association of Public Servants of the Federal District. That is the kind of number that tends to turn a payroll dispute into a payments and compliance problem very quickly.
4. According to TV Globo, the crimes under investigation are against the popular economy, misleading advertising in consumer relations, insertion and modification of data in public administration systems, active and passive corruption, criminal organization and money laundering.