08/19/2024 – 18:36
Electoral prosecutor Fabiano Augusto Petean has requested that the court suspend the registration of Pablo Marçal (PRTB), candidate for mayor of São Paulo, pending the judgment of an electoral judicial investigation action (AIJE) for alleged abuse of economic power in this year’s pre-campaign. The representative of the MPE also requested, on the merits, the lifting of tax and banking secrecy of the companies of the businessman and former coach. If convicted, Marçal could be ineligible for eight years.
The lawsuit filed by the Public Prosecutor’s Office claims that a complaint pointed to Marçal’s alleged promotion on social media, which is prohibited by electoral law. When contacted by the press, Marçal had not commented by the time this article was published.
“According to the material and the attached documentation, we have evidence that the incentive for social networks to replicate their electoral propaganda is financed by promising payments to ‘electoral campaigners’ and ‘sympathizers’ so that the ideas are disseminated in order to provide electoral support for their candidacy. In this sense, it is clear that paid boosting is prohibited by electoral legislation. To circumvent this prohibition, the candidate does not directly boost. On the contrary, he encourages the would-be campaigner or voter to, of their own free will, make their own post or propaganda. At this point, one could even identify voluntariness. But the behavior did not rest solely on this aspect,” the prosecutor said.
According to the initial complaint filed on Saturday, the 17th, by the MPE, “the representation brought information, citing videos and news websites, to mention that the candidate ‘has been developing a strategy of co-opting collaborators to disseminate his content on social networks and streaming services which, with an eye on the elections, is illicit and abusive in nature’”, the prosecutor cited in the document.
The prosecutor also mentions that Marçal’s alleged encouragement of voters via the internet, “without declaring the form of payment and computing the facts financially in accounts or transparent documentation capable of demonstrating the integrity of the accounts, points to an undeclared, undocumented financial amount without conditions for relating to the economic limits used for the ‘electoral promotion’ of such behaviors, unbalancing the electoral contest”.
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