The main private equity funds (FIPs) managed by MAM Asset, a management company of the Master group, are structures used by businessman Nelson Tanure , who is being investigated by the Federal Police and was the target of Operation Compliance Zero.
But the private equity funds (FIPs) managed by Master, which has been in extrajudicial liquidation since November of last year by decision of the Central Bank, are not limited to Tanure. One of MAM's large FIPs places a company under investigation in Operation Lava Jato in the midst of a new crisis.
The construction company MPE Engenharia is the sole shareholder of Orquídea FIP Multiestratégia, which has net assets of R$ 670 million and an accumulated return of 13,344.18% over eight years.
The MPE group was the target of investigations within the scope of Lava Jato for irregularities in public contracts, and yet it continues to have a significant presence in public tenders.
The Orquídea FIP Multiestratégia fund was created in December 2018, initially under the management of Planner Trustee, and its administration was transferred to MAM Asset in 2021.
According to documents obtained by NeoFeed , the transaction did not require the convening of a formal extraordinary general meeting, on the grounds that the two institutions belong to the same economic group.
Since then, auditors have refrained from issuing opinions on the fund's financial statements due to a lack of transparency in the accounts of the invested holding company. Without new investments, the fund's expansion has been driven by the appreciation of the Orquídea Participações Holding Company.
From the holding company's perspective, the expansion of its assets occurred primarily through contributions classified as advances for future capital increases (AFAC).
This instrument, which allows the injection of resources into the company as an advance on capitalization, totaled R$ 397.5 million as of 2022 - the date of the last published balance sheet.
Although legitimate, the recurring use of AFAC (Advance for Future Capital Increase) without the effective execution of a capital increase keeps these resources in a kind of legal and accounting limbo, without the same scrutiny typical of a formal capitalization and without the same level of transparency about their origin.
In highly concentrated structures, the mechanism helps shield the fund's value from external shocks, but it also makes independent valuation of the asset more difficult.
MAM Asset's growth occurred precisely in funds with less transparency. The largest expansion took place in FIPs (Private Equity Investment Funds), which grew by more than R$ 11 billion between 2021 and 2024 and came to account for R$ 18.43 billion of the R$ 33.4 billion that Master managed at one point.
Ties with the MPE Group
The holding company Orquídea Participações was created just three months before the Orquídea Fund and its partners are Marcelo de Castro Faria Ferreira, contracts manager at MPE since 1998, and Luiz Antonio da Cunha Pinto, a partner in group companies such as Aat International and Agromon, where he was a partner with Renato de Abreu, founder of the MPE Group (who passed away at the end of 2023).
Pinto e Ferreira, as well as the holding company invested in by FIP Orquídea, appear in a lawsuit filed by the Attorney General's Office of the National Treasury, in which the holding company appears as guarantor of debts of the MPE group with the Union.
The process concerns the collection of a tax debt exceeding R$ 100 million, the original debtor being MPE Montagens e Projetos Especiais, an operating company within the group.
According to the documents, the debt stems from infraction notices with qualified fines applied in the context of the Lava Jato Operation investigations, in which the Federal Revenue Service identified conduct considered fraudulent for tax purposes.
The PGFN (Attorney General's Office for the National Treasury) argues that MPE (Microenterprise) recorded bribe payments as expenses and that, therefore, taxes and social security contributions owed to the Union were suppressed, given the reduction in the tax base for income tax and social contribution on net profit.
MPE Montagens e Projetos Especiais was declared ineligible by the Federal Court of Accounts (TCU) in 2018, preventing its contracting by the Federal Public Administration for 3 years. The penalty occurred in the context of the Lava Jato investigations, in which the company was accused of participating in a group of companies that defrauded public tenders.
The last payments from the Federal Government to MPE Montagens e Projetos Especiais occurred in 2017, according to data from the Federal Government's Transparency Portal. However, the decision by the Federal Court of Accounts did not prevent the group from continuing to enter into contracts with the public sector in subsequent years, albeit through a new CNPJ (Brazilian taxpayer identification number).
The work continues.
The chosen company was MPE Engenharia e Serviços, created in 2001 and which, until then, had practically not been among the contractors of the federal public administration. It was through this company that the MPE group received R$ 458,352,882.19 in payments from the Union, starting in 2015.
According to data from the Transparency Portal, the total value of the contracts amounts to R$ 667.3 million, of which only R$ 4.7 million were allocated to construction contracts. Of the total, R$ 391 million correspond to service contracts, while R$ 268 million are classified as "other".
There was an attempt to extend the effects of the sanction to other companies within the MPE group, based on the existence of an economic group. However, the Federal Court of Accounts (TCU) rejected the automatic extension of the penalty, understanding that administrative sanctions must be applied individually, in the absence of evidence of the use of other companies to circumvent the punishment.
Most of the payments, which are still ongoing, relate to maintenance services for government properties, including campuses of the University of Brasília, units of the Oswaldo Cruz Institute, and contracts linked to the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation.
The company is also still involved in controversies related to state government tenders. The most emblematic recent case involves the tender for the repair of the cable car in the Complexo do Alemão favela in Rio de Janeiro.
Won by MPE Engenharia at the end of 2025, the bidding process had only four proposals and was marked by a series of disqualifications, due diligence procedures, and administrative appeals that culminated in only one bidder remaining.
In the end, the Infrastructure Secretariat of Rio de Janeiro approved and awarded the contract to MPE Engenharia, for the amount of R$ 116.5 million, after exhausting all administrative avenues.
Among the accusations made by MPE's competitors are the selective application of technical criteria and the carrying out of due diligence procedures that, according to them, benefited only one bidder. In their administrative appeals, the companies argue that the conduct of the bidding process ended up reducing competition until only one qualified participant remained.
In São Paulo, MPE was also part of the Monotrilho Integração Consortium, responsible for the implementation of Metro Line 17-Gold. The contract, signed in 2011, was the target of successive criticisms from the State Court of Auditors, which, even in 2016, pointed out the absence of a basic project, the execution of services without contractual coverage, and addenda that significantly increased the cost of the work.
Last year, the TCE-SP (São Paulo State Court of Auditors) condemned former executives of the state-owned company for irregularities in the management of the contract, and the consortium ended up being included on the list of companies barred from contracting with the public sector. MPE, however, remains eligible for new contracts.
Contacted for comment, MAM Asset did not respond by the time of publication. And the partners of Orquídea and MPE Engenharia said they would not comment.
