Brazilian Electoral Justice searches former minister Sergio Moro’s home

The Electoral Justice of the Brazilian state of Parana has executed this Saturday a search warrant and seizure of irregular campaign material at the home of former Minister of Justice and Public Security Sergio Moro, now a candidate for the Senate and at the home of Paulo Martins, also a candidate for the Senate.

One of the two properties registered is Moro’s home, official headquarters of his campaign committee, according to the Brazilian newspaper ‘O Globo’. The initiative has been launched at the request of the federation Brazil of Hope, led by the Workers’ Party of presidential candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

The Regional Electoral Court of Paraná has found printed material that violates electoral legislation and points out that Moro and Martins have published irregular propaganda on social networks for including the name of the senatorial candidate in a disproportionate font size in relation to that of the names of the alternates.

Electoral judge Melissa de Azevedo Olivas points out that some of these publications “do not even mention the names of the alternates, in flagrant breach of electoral legislation.”

One million irregular printed matter including stickers and badges have been seized and more than 300 links on social networks of candidates such as YouTube videos have been ordered to be removed. In some Moro criticized Lula da Silva.

Moro has criticized this “abusive” intervention and recalled that this material has been intervened because “allegedly, the names of the two alternates are not 30 percent the size of the incumbent’s name.”

“It does not correspond to the truth. The names are in accordance with the required standards and that is why the legal team will ask to reconsider the decision (…). We condemn this aggressive initiative and the sensationalism of the diligence required by the PT,” said one of Moro’s lawyers, Gustavo Guedes.

According to Datafolha’s poll for the October presidential elections published in mid-August, Lula leads the polls with 47 percent of voting intention, compared to 32 percent for the country’s current leader, Jair Bolsonaro.

However, this gap between the candidates has narrowed in the last month, as the difference in July was 21 points as opposed to the current 15.