Minister Floriano de Azevedo Marques, from the Superior Electoral Court, voted to acquit the senator (-SC). The electoral court resumed this Tuesday (10) the trial that calls for the revocation of the Bolsonarista’s mandate. So far, only the rapporteur has spoken.
For Floriano, there is not enough evidence to prove the senator’s illicit conduct. “Inconsistency is not enough, evidence is needed. And not just any evidence. Robust evidence,” he said.
The parliamentarian responds to accusations of abuse of economic power in the 2022 general elections.
The case had been on hold since the first half of 2024 and was put on the agenda and postponed on three occasions. Since then, the presidency and composition of the court have changed — but the rapporteur remains in charge of the process.
Since the start of the trial, four seats have been changed in the court. André Mendonça, from the STF, Antonio Carlos and Ricardo Villas Bôas Cueva, from the STJ, and Estela Aranha took over.
The case also involves businessmen Luciano Hang, owner of the Havan store chain, and Almir Manoel Atanázio dos Santos, from the Footwear Industry Union in the city of São João Batista (SC).
One of the central points of the process is the use of Hang aircraft by the Seif campaign. According to the rapporteur, the fact, in itself, would not be an offense. It would be necessary to prove the engagement of the business group, which is prohibited. But the minister claims that there is a lack of evidence.
“It is undeniable that there is a gray area surrounding the means of transport used by the candidate’s campaign. It is not possible to rule out the hypothesis that aircraft were used and that they were owned by Havan. But it was not possible to obtain a list of passengers for each aircraft, either because they were private flights that took off and landed on small helipads, or because the passage of time has made it impossible to have such records,” he said.
Floriano de Azevedo Marques stated, more than once, that the evidence should have been produced at the beginning of the process.
“Nothing occurred or came to light in the records that linked the candidate beyond doubt to any of the flights identified by Havan aircraft in the responses to the letters sent during the investigations,” he said.
The minister made several criticisms of the parties to the process, and also of the reporting of the case in Santa Catarina. According to him, there were omissions not addressed by the judge, which could have caused the loss of evidence, such as data from electronic devices, photographs and witnesses.
The trial will resume this Thursday (12) with the votes of the other ministers.
The action against Seif was presented by the Patriota, PSD and União Brasil parties, which pointed out suspicion of undue favoritism to the then candidate for 2022.
The parties say there was an irregular donation of a helicopter to transport the then candidate, the use of the physical structure and personnel of the company Havan to promote the campaign and the financing of electoral propaganda by a union entity.
In April 2024, the . At the request of the rapporteur, new steps were taken, with the aim of supporting a court decision on the accusations against the parliamentarian.
This information took a long time to reach the TSE in full due to the difficulty of subpoenaing aerodromes that were supposed to provide data to the court.
The TSE asked Havan for information on the prefixes of all aircraft it owned or that were available to the company from January 2022 to March 2023.
With this data, a series of landing strips and helipads were asked to report whether these aircraft had landed or taken off during the period mentioned and, if so, the list of passengers on board.
Initially, the prediction was that the answers would come quickly, and the minister even considered that he would be able to close the trial before ending his term as head of the TSE, in 2024.
The situation, however, was more complex. Most aerodromes pointed out that there were no landings or takeoffs of the aircraft used by Havan. Furthermore, the information that the court already had did little to strengthen the case.
At the beginning of the trial, part of the Congress leadership worked for the court to acquit the Bolsonarist. The movement included allies of (PL) and parliamentarians not aligned with the former president, especially in the Senate, including the then president of the House, (PSD-MG) and the governor of São Paulo, (Republicans).
They assessed that the impeachment of a senator would be a traumatic measure, which could lead to even more friction with Congress and Bolsonaro’s supporters. This same argument was used by members of the Senate leadership to maintain the mandate of the former judge (União Brasil-PR),
Previously a fierce critic of the Judiciary, Seif also made gestures in an attempt to improve the climate with ministers. He, less than a year after defending the magistrate’s impeachment.
