Mayor in soybean belt suspended over criminal activity

Cuiabá Mayor Emanuel Pinheiro, currently suspended. Photo: Luiz Alves/Prefeitura de Cuiabá

The deputy mayor of Cuiabá, José Roberto Stopa, took office on Tuesday morning as acting mayor after Emanuel Pinheiro was suspended from office by a court decision under suspicion of fraud.

Cuiabá, a city of 650,000 people, is the capital of the state of Mato Grosso, Brazil’s biggest soybean-producing hub.

Prosecutors and the police had requested judges to suspend Mr. Pinheiro from office under an investigation for fraud in the city’s healthcare services.

The Cuiabá City Hall told The Brazilian Report that Mr. Pinheiro was officially notified of the court decision on Monday afternoon and, complying with the court decision, did not go to the mayor’s office today.

The Mato Grosso accounts court, a public spending watchdog, identified a total BRL 1.2 billion (USD 240 million) in diverted funds. The report is cited in the decision by higher-court judge Luiz Ferreira da Silva to justify the urgency of suspending Mr. Pinheiro from office.

There is “sufficient evidence”, the judge wrote, to identify the defendants as “alleged members of a criminal organization whose objective is the repeated practice of crimes against the treasury of the Municipality of Cuiabá”.

Mr. Pinheiro, a member of the centrist Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB), was re-elected in late 2020 for a four year-term. He was previously suspended from office in 2021 for similar reasons and returned after a few weeks due to a new court decision.