The newspaper O REGIÕES revealed a case of public procurement at the Municipal Services of Castelo Branco (SMAS) that generated a documentary dispute between the municipality and the media outlet. In May 2026, SMAS invited O REGIÕES for a direct award of digital advertising, awarded the contract to the company Lápis Épico (which manages the newspaper) on May 18, and set the deadline of May 27 for submission of qualification documents.
O REGIÕES claims it sent all requested documents on May 20 and was told by phone that everything was in order. However, on July 1, SMAS informed them that the award had expired due to missing qualification documents, and on July 6 they specified that the certificates of no debt and criminal record certificates were missing.
An email from May 12, sent by the accounting department of O REGIÕES, states that "regarding the Tax Authority, Lápis has debt," which raises questions about the company's fiscal situation at the time. The newspaper acknowledges that the existence of tax debt does not automatically imply a prohibition from contracting, but demands explanations about what the concrete situation was and what document proved it.
O REGIÕES, directed by Fernando Jesus Pires, guarantees it has documentation that can be presented to the competent authorities and challenges any entity to prove otherwise with documents. The newspaper does not allege illegal discrimination, but questions whether the same criteria were applied to other media outlets in comparable situations, demanding transparency and documented responses in a process it considers to have remained too long without clear communication to the awardee.
