The National Council of Justice (CNJ) ordered this Thursday (28) the precautionary removal of federal judge Sandro Nunes Vieira, a magistrate cited in the Federal Police (PF) report that indicted former president Jair Bolsonaro and 36 defendants for attempting to coup d’état in 2022.
Vieira was an assistant judge at the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), the body that organizes elections, between 2019 and August 2022. He is currently assigned to the first instance of the Federal Court in Paranaguá (PR).
The decision was taken by the National Inspector of Justice, Minister Mauro Campbell Marques, after receiving a letter from Minister Alexandre de Moraes, of the Federal Supreme Court (STF), communicating the mention of the magistrate’s name in the investigations. Sandro Nunes Vieira was not investigated in the coup investigation.
According to the PF, the judge would have participated in the report commissioned by the PL from the Instituto Voto Legal (IVL), following the results of the second round of elections, to allege alleged fraud in electronic voting machines.
The suspicions were found in messages on the cell phone of Mauro Cid, Jair Bolsonaro’s former aide-de-camp, and Marcelo Câmara, then the former president’s advisor.
In a conversation that is part of the investigation, Bolsonaro’s former advisors commented that the judge had said he did not want to have his name mentioned in the case.
However, on November 19, 2022, the party president, Valdemar de Costa Neto, said, in an interview with the news website Poder 360, that he had spoken with Sandro Vieira about the alleged irregularities in the electronic voting machines.
“I spoke to a former director of the TSE, who is a judge, Sandro, and he told me, he was there six months ago. He told me, he is an honest man”, stated Valdemar.
Based on the analysis of the conversations, the PF concluded that the judge provided advice to the PL in the representation sent to the TSE to attack the electronic voting machines.
“The evidence identified by the investigation demonstrates that Sandro Nunes Vieira acted illegally and clandestinely when advising the Liberal Party on electoral representation against electronic voting machines”, say the investigators.
Representation
On November 22, 2022, after Bolsonaro lost the second round to Lula, the PL filed a representation in the TSE to cancel votes from around 280,000 electronic voting machines used in the second round of elections.
The TSE then fined the party R$22.9 million for bad faith litigation. In the decision, the court understood that the party did not include in its representation alleged irregularities in the first round, which led Bolsonaro into the dispute with Lula. The ballot boxes are used in both shifts.
Other side
THE Brazil Agency contacted Judge Sandro Vieira’s office and is awaiting a response. The space is open for manifestation.
The Federal Regional Court of the 4th Region (TRF4) informed that it will comply with the CNJ’s determinations and that it has also opened an administrative procedure against the magistrate.
The Federal Court in Paraná declared that it will not issue a statement on the case.
