A reader's comment triggered a journalistic investigation that led to the arrests of 36 candidates for upcoming municipal elections in Brazil. With outstanding warrants for various charges – from delinquent child support to homicide – these candidates were vying for votes in the streets and on social networks.
“We received a complaint that a candidate was on the run for rape of a vulnerable person. We looked and found nothing to confirm this information. But from then on, we thought ‘ok, he’s not on the run, but are there any candidates on the run?,’” G1 reporter Camila da Silva told LatAm Journalism Review (LJR).
That reader comment was buried under one of 5,569 automated articles G1 published with lists of candidates for each Brazilian municipality. It led Silva and reporter Judite Cypreste to carry out an investigation, based on data journalism, that identified 63 candidates with outstanding arrest warrants.
According to Silva, editor Vitor Sorano suggested she and Cypreste carry out this investigation by crossing data from the National Bank of Arrest Warrants (BNMP, for its acronym in Portuguese), maintained by the National Council of Justice (CNJ), with the information available on the Candidacy Disclosure and Electoral Accounts portal (DivulgaCand), maintained by the Superior Electoral Court (TSE).
“I already had experience with the BNMP and knew it had some problems,” Cypreste told LJR. “You have to download arrest warrants by state, because there is no way to download them nationally.”
The reporter said she got stuck when it came to analyzing records from São Paulo since there was a download limit of 30,000 lines and the state has more than 60,000 outstanding arrest warrants.
While Cypreste was talking to the National Council of Justice to obtain data from São Paulo, she began analyzing data from other states using the Python programming language. From there the first common names appeared in the warrant and candidate databases, which indicated the existence of dozens of candidates wanted by the courts.
Silva then went on to confirm whether the names in the two databases actually corresponded to the same person. In this process, she found that, among the warrants from the Federal District, three had been issued by the office of the Minister of the Supreme Federal Court (STF) Alexandre de Moraes. The reporters soon suspected that they were people accused of being involved in the undemocratic acts of Jan. 8, 2023 in Brasília, as Moraes is the rapporteur of the STF investigation looking into the invasions of the headquarters of the three branches of government.
They confirmed that the targets of these arrest warrants were accused in the Jan. 8 attacks and were candidates for councilor in municipalities in Paraná, Santa Catarina and São Paulo. They heard from civil police and Federal Police departments in each state and the defenses of the candidates sought by the courts, and on Sept. 14 they published the first article of this investigation. In the afternoon of the same day, one of the candidates was arrested. The other two were arrested in the following days.
In the meantime, the National Council of Justice sent Cypreste the warrants from the state of São Paulo, completing the collection of data from the National Bank of Arrest Warrants. They were then able to finalize the national analysis, crossing 302,509 arrest warrants and 461,564 candidacy records. They found 108 cases in which a person's name and date of birth were the same in both databases.
But this information was not enough to confirm the identities of candidates wanted by the courts. And, according to a recent decision by the Superior Electoral Court, DivulgaCand no longer makes candidates' Individual Taxpayer Registration (CPF) numbers available.
“Unfortunately, several cross-checks that we could do in an easier way, including this one, we were unable to do,” Cypreste said. “The only identification numbers [available on DivulgaCand] are the voter registration card and an internal TSE registration number, which can be used to carry out other types of cross-checks within their own databases.”
Silva explained that the candidates' documents available in the Superior Electoral Court’s database have their Individual Taxpayer Registration number and other personal information redacted. However, the criminal record certificate presented by the candidates to the Superior Electoral Court can be authenticated with the institution that issued it. In most cases, the authentication revealed the candidates' Individual Taxpayer Registration numbers, which the reporters then compared to the numbers on the arrest warrants. Silva highlighted, however, that there were warrants without Individual Taxpayer Registration numbers, and in these cases they had to find other ways of confirmation.
While they were checking the data, some warrants were excluded from the national arrest warrant database and some candidates were considered unfit to run by the Electoral Justice System. The reporters confirmed that, in addition to the three candidates wanted by the courts in connection with the undemocratic acts of Jan. 8, 2023, another 60 candidates for elections across the country had outstanding arrest warrants.
The majority of cases (46) were related to child support debts, which entails a type of arrest that is revoked shortly after payment of the amount owed, the article explains. But there are 14 criminal cases, with four candidates wanted in cases of theft or robbery, three of homicide, two of rape of a vulnerable person, two of larceny, one of bodily injury and one of criminal association (in one case it was not possible to know the crime behind the accusation).
G1 journalists spread across the country joined the investigation to meet and hear from all the candidates and their political parties.
“We were extremely concerned not to attribute a crime to anyone or judge any of these people, because that is not the focus of the article. This fact checking was essential, because we could have included a person who was not wanted. And the regional impact of this has tremendous weight. For me, this was the most challenging part, because we had to do all of this very quickly without losing precision,” Silva said.
On Sept. 19, G1 reported that the Federal Police said it had arrested 19 candidates wanted by the courts between the 17th and 19th – after, therefore, the publication of G1's first article on candidates with outstanding arrest warrants.
According to a statement from the Federal Police, as of Sept. 20, 36 candidates with outstanding warrants were arrested in the states of Minas Gerais, São Paulo, Paraná, Maranhão, Acre, Rio Grande do Sul, Sergipe, Roraima, Mato Grosso do Sul and Santa Catarina.
LJR contacted the Federal Police and questioned the connection between the G1 articles and the arrests made in recent days. The Federal Police responded that “it does not comment on any ongoing investigations or future actions.”
As of Sept. 21, candidates sought by the courts cannot be arrested, as Brazilian law determines that, in the 15 days before the elections, candidates can only be detained or arrested in the case of a “flagrant crime.”
The articles from G1 explain that, according to Brazilian law, only people convicted with a final sentence or a collective decision by judges are prohibited from participating in elections. Therefore, people with outstanding arrest warrants are not prevented from being candidates. However, a person wanted by the courts can be arrested at any time, and a possible arrest makes it difficult to take office.
“Pre-trial detention can last several months, compromising the act of serving in office, as, for example, in the case of a mayor. Therefore, it is essential that voters know who they are voting for,” lawyer Alberto Rollo, a specialist in electoral law, told G1.
The investigation carried out by Silva and Cypreste points to a lack of communication in the Brazilian justice system, Cypreste said.
An example is the case, revealed by the investigation, of a candidate running in his third election with an outstanding arrest warrant. He has a pre-trial warrant issued in 1997 and ran for councilor in 2016, 2020 and 2024. According to G1, a complaint from the São Paulo Public Prosecutor’s Office said he shot dead a man after an argument in a bar in 1996. According to the article, the candidate's defense maintains that the only evidence against him is the testimony of the victim's wife, and that the candidate was unaware of the arrest warrant. The trial for homicide has not yet concluded.
In another case, a man convicted of raping a vulnerable person had his candidacy for councilor approved by the Electoral Justice System four days before his conviction became final.
“Many people will think that the impact of this article is the arrests. For me, particularly, more than arrests, [the impact] is to start a discussion for the courts to communicate more and for data to be used by public bodies in a really efficient way, and a discussion about how laws have loopholes,” Cypreste said.
Silva also highlighted that the repercussions of the article among readers and in the public debate had an important impact, in addition to the arrests.
“It was cool to see our readers commenting ‘wow, but can this happen?’, ‘wow, why hasn’t anyone talked about this before?’ or ‘wow, so many cases!’. Okay, we're talking about municipal elections, there are many candidates and these cases are very few of the total. Still, it is a reality that needs to be exposed, and we managed to do that.”
