Simone Tebet

Simone Nassar Tebet (born 27 February 1970) is a Brazilian academic, lawyer, and politician who has served as the Brazilian Minister of Planning and Budget since 5 January 2023.

Tebet was born to governor, senator, and President of the National Congress Ramez Tebet and Fairte Nassar Tebet, a philanthropist, in 1970.

She is of Lebanese descent on both her mother and father's sides.

She graduated in law from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and is a specialist in legal science from the Escola Superior de Magistratura, and has masters in state law from the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo.

She began her career as a professor in 1992, working at Dom Bosco Catholic University, Anhanguera-Uniderp University, and the Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul.

Simone Tebet started her career in 2002 when she was elected as a state representative in Mato Grosso do Sul with 25,251 votes, becoming the most voted woman that year.

In 2004 she was elected for the first time as the first female mayor of Três Lagoas.

On March 31, 2010, she resigned from the mayor's office to compose André Puccinelli's ticket in the election for the government of Mato Grosso do Sul, as a candidate for vice governor.

With the ticket victorious, she became the state's first female vice-governor.

Between April 2013 and January 2014, Simone headed the Government Secretariat.

Simone Tebet was also director of municipal affairs at the Association of Municipalities of Mato Grosso do Sul and a member of the Representative Council for the Midwest of the National Confederation of Municipalities.

In the 2014 parliamentary elections, Tebet ran for senator for Mato Grosso do Sul, being elected on October 5.

She previously was Senator for Mato Grosso do Sul from 2015 to 2023, Vice-Governor of Mato Grosso do Sul from 2011 to 2014, and mayor of Três Lagoas from 2005 to 2010.

She was sworn in as senator on February 1, 2015.

In August 2016, she voted in favor of impeaching Dilma Rousseff.

In December of that same year, she voted in favor of the PEC do Teto dos Gastos Públicos.

In the elections for the presidency of the Federal Senate of Brazil in 2017, Simone was a pre-candidate for president of the house.

However, her party nominated Senator Eunício Oliveira to run for that position.

In July 2017, the senator voted in favor of labor reform.

In October 2017, she voted in favor of maintaining the mandate of Senator Aécio Neves, overturning the decision of the First Panel of the Federal Supreme Court, where Neves was accused of corruption and obstruction of justice for requesting two million reais from businessman Joesley Batista.

A member of the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB), of which she was the leader in the Senate from 2018 to 2019, Tebet was the MDB candidate for president in the 2022 Brazilian general election, placing third with 4.16% of the vote.

After endorsing Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, in the second round, Tebet was appointed Minister of Planning.

Tebet ran for President of the Senate in 2021 against Rodrigo Pacheco, who was backed by both President Jair Bolsonaro and former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's Workers' Party.

In April 2018, she was chosen leader of the MDB bench in the Federal Senate, a position she held until January 2019.

Tebet, while Senator, defended the payment of compensation to farmers, whose land was taken for indigenous peoples.

She also proposed suspending the demarcation of further lands for indigenous peoples for up to four years.

Both proposals were criticized by human rights organizations, who point to alleged conflicts of interest, pointing out that the Senator owns a farm in Caarapó, Mato Grosso do Sul.

The municipality's recent history has been marked by violence against indigenous populations.

Tebet was defended by agricultural interests and Jair Bolsonaro.

Tebet spearheaded an inquiry into Covaxin fraud in the Senate.

She questioned the leader of a taskforce that distributed vaccines and why the contract with the Indian company was cancelled.

She reportedly found 20 instances of fraud and said that the documents "should have never gone to the health ministry."

She also found multiple translation and formatting errors that the Chief of Staff of the Presidency Onyx Lorenzoni had seemingly ignored, along with cheaper vaccine alternatives like Pfizer and found financial error in the work of Élcio Franco, who is now under investigation by Rosa Weber, a justice of the Supreme Federal Court.

In this way, she became one of the main critics of Jair Bolsonaro's COVID-19 response.

In June 2019, she voted against the government's Decree on Arms, which made it easier to carry and hold firearms.

In 2019, the senator disputed the nomination of her party for the candidacy for the presidency of the Federal Senate.

However, Renan Calheiros was nominated, losing the election among his party senators by 7 votes to 5.

Subsequently, Simone launched a separate candidacy for the position, but ended up withdrawing to increase the chances of a victory for Davi Alcolumbre ( then DEM, now UNIÃO ) over Renan Calheiros, which eventually occurred.

In 2019, she was elected president of the Constitution, Justice and Citizenship Commission, becoming the first woman to preside over the collegiate body.

It is considered the most important one in the Senate.