In Brazil, a country where 5% of the population lives on the equivalent of 21 euros per month, magistrates who accumulate administrative duties receive an extra salary and are entitled to one day of vacation every three days which can, if they prefer, be converted into payment. Therefore, as scholars observe, there is a triple – or quadruple – remuneration, because this amount, considered compensation, is not subject to tax.
In Brazil, a country where 23% of the population is considered “poor” by the UN, although 8.6 million will no longer be poor in 2024, magistrates benefit from 60 days of vacation, twice as much as ordinary citizens, but can sell 20 of these days. They receive, on the other hand, more than double the minimum wage in food allowance, more than five times the minimum wage in health allowance, in addition to education allowance for children up to 24 years of age, transport allowance and allowances for purchasing mobile phones, computers and books.
In Brazil, a country where the richest 1% has an income 30 times higher than that of the poorest 50%, the costs of the proceedings that the losing party is obliged to pay, since the new Civil Code of 2025, do not go to the public coffers, as in the rest of the world, but to the pockets of these magistrates.
With these “gimmicks”, as the absurd privileges of the judiciary are called, at the São Paulo Court of Justice, for example, judges and prosecutors earn in some cases 165% above the public service salary ceiling.
In 2025, in fact, the cost of the “hangings” exceeded that of five social programs: the defense insurance, for artisanal fishermen during the fishing ban period, the gas aid, for families unable to buy cylinders, the nest egg, to encourage students, the crop guarantee, to support small farmers affected by bad weather, and the reconstruction aid, for victims of the 2024 floods in Rio Grande do Sul. South.
In 1989, Brazil elected an adventurous chief from Alagoas named Collor de Mello because, historians say, the candidate managed to effectively sell the epithet “hunter of maharajas” by promising to persecute public servants with immoral salaries during the campaign.
Not far from Brazil but much closer in time, this journalist heard in Buenos Aires, during coverage of the 2023 elections, Javier Milei and his entourage sing at a rally, as if they were at the candy box“afraid, the caste is afraid”, regarding the perks that the bureaucratic elite would supposedly lose with him in power.
Collor, who after his presidency lived like a maharaja (and, under house arrest in a luxury building, still does), was laid bare by History. Milei has not yet, but his government caste has already been hit by corruption scandals.
What is certain is that it was the populist right who revived this discourse because the left, by definition, is complacent with the millionaire privileges of the civil service.
But Flávio Dino, former minister of Lula da Silva and now judge of the Supreme Court, banned, last week, new “hangings” for the “caste” of “maharajás”. It’s a breath of fresh air.
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