The plenary session of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) has on its agenda this Tuesday (4) the judgment of an appeal in which the Public Electoral Ministry (MPE) requests the impeachment of the governor of Rio de Janeiro, Cláudio Castro. 
The case was included in the trial agenda last week, one day after Operation Containment, launched to combat organized crime in Complexo da Penha, resulted in the deaths of 121 people, including four police officers.
For the MPE, Castro used the hiring of temporary labor by bodies linked to the government to irrigate his 2022 electoral campaign with public money. According to the complaint, temporary workers were hired without clear criteria, under suspicion of political appointments and were paid “over the counter” in cash.
Suspicious hires
According to the indictment, the number of suspicious hires reached 27 thousand at the Rio de Janeiro State Center for Statistics, Research and Training of Public Servants Foundation (Ceperj) and 18 thousand at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (Uerj), all during the 2022 electoral campaign.
In May last year, Castro was acquitted by the Regional Electoral Court of Rio de Janeiro (TRE-RJ), by 4 votes to 3. At the time, the understanding prevailed that even if the irregularities had occurred, the involvement of the now governor in the deviations would not have been proven.
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Irregularities
For the majority of TRE-RJ, the irregularities would also not have been able to influence the final result of the election.
The rapporteur, judge Peterson Barroso Simão, who had voted for the impeachment, was defeated. He considered that the existence of irregular hirings had been demonstrated and that they compromised the electoral result in favor of Castro.
“People who did not live in the state of Rio de Janeiro were hired. And there are even reports of payments to prisoners, ghost employees and public servants with undue positions”, highlighted Simão.
In 2022, Cláudio Castro was elected in the first round with 60% of valid votes, having received around 2.6 million more than second place, Marcelo Freixo (PSOL).
