The compensation is paid to power transmission companies whose contracts were renewed in 2012 under provisional presidential decree 579/2012 for assets that had not yet been fully amortized. The legislation established compensation payments for those non-amortized assets, with the total amount estimated at R$62 billion.

Initially, those payments were expected to be made over eight years, as established by a Mines and Energy Ministry ordinance published in 2016. The compensation process, however, sparked controversy and legal disputes over the calculation methodology. In 2017, an injunction suspended part of the payments, which were only resumed in 2020.

Last year, when reviewing reconsideration requests filed by power sector associations, the board of Brazil’s electricity regulator ANEEL reduced the amount owed by about R$5.6 billion, at June 2025 prices. The closure of the TCU case therefore preserves the burden on electricity consumers, who will continue making payments through their bills until 2028.

Within the TCU, the debate centered on whether the government’s regulatory framework was lawful, particularly regarding the appropriateness of the adjustment factor used to update compensation values in order to offset the transmission companies’ temporary lack of access to those funds.

Initially, the TCU’s technical staff argued that the adopted calculation rule was illegal and proposed ordering the Mines and Energy Ministry to suspend the provision establishing the remuneration factor as early as 2019. In 2020, then-reporting member Aroldo Cedraz requested additional analysis. In 2022, the technical staff reaffirmed its earlier position. Cedraz left the TCU in February of this year.

In 2023, however, the prosecutor’s service attached to the TCU disagreed with the technical staff and supported the legality of the ordinance and the government’s rule, arguing that the selected calculation factor was intended to compensate transmission companies for lack of access to funds owed between 2013 and 2017, a period in which the assets were effectively “sterilized,” without securitization potential and requiring companies to rely on their own capital.

In December 2025, the issue returned to the agenda, and Cedraz proposed following the technical staff’s recommendation by ordering the Mines and Energy Ministry to partially revoke the rule and requiring ANEEL to take steps to ensure proper compensation for transmission companies.

The judgment was suspended, however, after Benjamin Zymler requested time to examinate the case records. In February 2026, Zymler presented a vote defending the existing criterion on the grounds of legal certainty and regulatory stability.

At the time, Zymler emphasized that revising the payments after such a long period would create systemic disruption, given that about 81.14% of the amount were expected to be settled by the 2025/2026 cycle. Cedraz ultimately aligned with the reviewer’s recommendation despite some differences.

Also in February, Bruno Dantas proposed converting the audit into a diligence and requesting further clarification from the Mines and Energy Ministry and ANEEL.

“The new elements presented by the Mines and Energy Ministry and ANEEL confirm the hypothesis I expressed in my voting statement: the exact amount of compensation was unknown at the time the contract amendments were signed, which made prior technical studies quantitatively and objectively assessing the economic advantages of the renewal impossible,” said Dantas in his opinion.