Civil Police in São Paulo arrested Ronaldo Vivacqua on Sunday (Sept. 13). Investigators describe him as a hidden partner in one of the companies behind a building under construction that collapsed onto a house in Penha, a district on the east side of São Paulo, early on Saturday (Sept. 12), killing six people. According to G1, a court issued temporary arrest warrants for three people linked to the project. Besides Ronaldo, they target his son Cristiano Vivacqua, identified by police as the author of the design and the engineer in charge of the work, and Isis Brandão, who formally appears as the owner of the company. Cristiano and Isis are considered fugitives. None of the three has been convicted; all are suspects in a police inquiry.
According to police, Ronaldo's name does not appear in the documents of the two companies identified as responsible for the project, but witness statements and older records indicate that he ran the firm and took part in the construction. "We found out that he is, in fact, a hidden partner," said Safira Borges Moreira Parente, one of the police chiefs (delegadas) in charge of the case. Ronaldo denied any involvement with the builder in a preliminary hearing. The arrest request was based on the fact that none of the three had come forward to the authorities since the investigation began. Antônio José Pereira, the police chief for the Itaquera section, said officers tried to locate the company owner and the project engineer right after the collapse, without success, and also visited addresses listed with Jucesp, the state commercial registry. Investigators reported signs of an "attempt at concealment."
The defense disputes the claim. The lawyer for the companies tied to the project said Ronaldo held no management role at the builder and denied that he was a hidden partner; according to the defense, he was only accompanying his son, the engineer responsible for the work. The defense called the temporary arrests "premature" and said it will ask for Ronaldo's release. New Home Construtora, the company identified as responsible for the project, has said it opened an internal inquiry into the collapse.
A timeline of the irregularities
The site had drawn city enforcement action before the accident. In 2019, the work was cited and shut down for lacking a permit, a permit request by the builder was denied by the city and a fine of R$ 119,000 was issued, according to CNN Brasil. In 2021, the city government sued to have the irregular structure on the lot demolished. The permit for the new building was granted on the condition that the previous structure, roughly five or six stories tall, be torn down first. An inspection in February 2024, signed by an employee of the Penha subprefecture, recorded the demolition as completed, and the lawsuit was closed. After the collapse, preliminary findings by the CGM, the city's internal control office, indicate the required demolition never took place, and the employee who signed the report was suspended for an initial 30 days. "If that document is false, that person will also answer, civilly and criminally, for what she did," Mayor Ricardo Nunes said, according to Metrópoles. São Paulo State Governor Tarcísio de Freitas said the work was under embargo and that what was built did not match what had been authorized.
The collapse and the investigation
The 12-story building under construction fell onto a house on Rua Tequici around 2 a.m. on Saturday; security camera footage recorded the collapse at 1:58 a.m., according to Metrópoles. Eight people inside the house were hit. Two were rescued alive, a man and a child, and six died: three women, one of them pregnant, two men and a 7-year-old girl. The girl's body, the last missing victim, was found on Sunday afternoon, and firefighters ended the emergency search, G1 reported.
Police are investigating whether those responsible knew about stability problems before the collapse. Neighbors came forward to investigators and reported cracks in the house that was hit. A man with relatives in the home told police he had tried to contact the person who rented out the property to report the cracks, but the problem was never resolved. The line of inquiry, in the words of police chief Safira:
We started looking into the possibility that this was not entirely an unforeseeable event, but something the people responsible could have known about, the instability of that building.
Police stress that the cause of the collapse has not been determined; the conclusion depends, among other evidence, on the forensic engineering report from the São Paulo Scientific Police. Ronaldo was taken to the 24th police station (Ponte Rasa), where he will give a statement, the state government told CNN Brasil. The role of each of the three suspects will be laid out individually during the inquiry, and the defense intends to request the revocation of Ronaldo's temporary arrest.