Sanepar maintains a contract worth R$ 1,9 billion with Aegea Saneamento e Participações, one of the largest private sanitation companies in Brazil, which confessed to paying bribes to authorities in six Brazilian states between 2010 and 2018. Winner of Sanepar’s first Public-Private Partnership (PPP), the company won in 2023 the bid to provide sanitary sewage services in the Center-Coast microregion of Paraná.
According to a note published in February by the UOL portal, Aegea executives and collaborators admitted to paying bribes to public agents between 201o and 2018, after signing a plea bargain agreement ratified by Supreme Federal Court (STF) minister Raul Araújo in February of last year. The proceeding is confidential.
The scheme is said to have moved R$ 63 million in eight years. In a leniency agreement signed with the Federal Prosecution Service (MPF), the company is said to have committed to pay R$ 439 million to the Union. One of the whistleblowers is said to have been Hamilton Amadeo, former president of Aegea. He is said to have confessed that he authorized payments to public agents by means of cash, fictitious contracts, and the purchase of real estate and luxury vehicles.
According to the whistleblowers, there were bribe payments in five cities in Santa Catarina and to members of the State Court of Accounts; in five cities in Mato Grosso; in Campo Grande (MS); and to politicians in Rio de Janeiro and in Piracicaba (SP).
On February 5, Aegea published a Material Fact to the market, signed by the Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations Officer, André Pires de Oliveira Dias, informing that the agreement refers to circumstances prior to 2018, "investigated in internal and independent investigations, voluntarily shared with the MPF by the Company" (see below).
The agreement was signed in 2021, the same year in which Itaúsa, the holding company that controls ItaúUnibanco, acquired 8,5% of the company’s total capital and 10,2% of the voting capital. The contract with Sanepar was signed in October 2023.
PPP in Paraná
In April of last year, the government of Paraná reported that, in one year of operation, more than R$ 30 million had been invested in works in 16 municipalities on the Coast and in the Metropolitan Region of Curitiba through the PPP with Ambiental Paraná, Aegea’s local unit. The objective is to bring forward the goals established by the New Legal Framework for Basic Sanitation, which provides for 99% of the population to have access to treated water and 90% sewage collection and treatment by 2033. According to the government, the idea is to reach the goal by 2029.
Sanepar’s transparency portal reports that Ambiental Paraná was contracted in October 2023 for R$ 1.930.784.818,15, for the "provision of sanitary sewage services in the municipalities of the Center-Coast microregion served by Sanepar." The term of validity is 24 years and 5 months. The maximum value of the lot was R$ 2,7 billion.
Aegea’s notice to the market
The full text of the Material Fact released on February 5>
São Paulo, February 5, 2026 – Under the terms of CVM Resolution No. 44/2021, Aegea Saneamento e Participações S.A. ("Aegea" or the "Company") informs that, on 04/02/2026, it received information indicating a possible leak regarding the possible execution of an agreement between the Company and the Federal Prosecution Service – MPF.
The Company confirms the execution, on 21/4/2021, of an Agreement Term, having as parties, in the capacity of principal debtor of the amount of R$ 439.089.117,67 (to be paid in 15 annual installments, adjusted by the IPCA), the company Montese Engenharia e Comércio Ltda. (former subsidiary of the Company and current name of Aegea Engenharia e Comércio Ltda.) and, in the capacity of executing authorities,
members of the Federal Prosecution Service – MPF. The Company is a signatory only in the capacity of intervening guarantor.
The Company emphasizes that, from the execution of the aforementioned Agreement Term to the present moment, that information was and remains restricted due to the confidentiality determined under the terms of said Agreement.
The Agreement Term refers to circumstances prior to 2018, investigated in internal and independent investigations, voluntarily shared with the MPF by the Company, with its terms subject to legal secrecy related, including, to the dynamics adopted for its ratification and for the fulfillment of the agreed obligations.
The Agreement Term has no effect on the Company and its concessionaires, which have a solid capital structure and the capacity to honor their debts and continue with their investment plans. The Agreement Term also does not entail the early maturity of any debts or the termination of contracts signed by the Company and its concessionaires, nor will it prevent the execution of new contracts with public entities.
Regardless of the legal secrecy that has been in effect until now, the asset and accounting effects of the Agreement Term had already been incorporated by the Company into its financial statements, since fiscal year 2021, when it reported the recognition of adjustments, fundamentally related to capitalizations of intangible assets and their respective tax effects, in a
retrospective manner, and the qualification by the independent auditors related to investigations, already concluded, conducted internally regarding the Company’s operations, was removed.
Additionally, during that period, and up to this moment, the Company monitored the market in order to identify any concrete sign of information leakage.
The Company’s adherence to the Agreement Term as guarantor, definitively concluding the events, aimed to strengthen its commitment to ethics, thus ensuring its culture of corporate integrity.
André Pires de Oliveira Dias
Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations Officer
