Antonio Palocci Filho (born 4 October 1960) is a Brazilian physician and politician, and formerly Chief of Staff of Brazil under President Dilma Rousseff.

He was the finance minister of the Brazilian federal government from 1 January 2003 to 27 March 2006, when he resigned in the wake of reports of conduct unbecoming of his office during the presidency of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

After graduation, Palocci worked for five years as a civil servant at the Ribeirão Preto regional office of the São Paulo State Public Health Secretariat.

When Palocci was 28 years old, after occupying positions in various labour unions, including the CUT (linked to the Workers Party) he ran for election as a city councilman (vereador) for the first time.

It is during his administrations as mayor that Palocci is alleged to have led a major slush fund operation (see below) for the Workers' Party, a scheme denounced by a former secretary, Rogério Buratti [pt].

In 2003, when Lula was elected, Palocci officially resigned as the mayor of Ribeirão Preto, was nominated the Finance Minister of Brazil and became a key figure in the new government.

A new scandal began to unfold in 2006 after a parliamentary inquiry heard testimony from two witnesses who claimed that the minister might have visited a manor house in Brasília suspected of functioning as a hub for fraudulent operations within the government, with the participation of some of his closest aides.

The groundskeeper justified the figures by claiming that the money had been deposited by his alleged biological father, a relatively well-off businessman from the state of Piauí, in order to prevent a legal dispute over paternity.

The court, the right-wing opposition, and the corporate media turned their full attention to the leaking of the bank statement as a breach of Costa's financial privacy rights.