Fourteen candidates in Brazil's 2026 elections hold more than R$ 100 million in environmental fines issued over the past ten years by Ibama, the federal environmental enforcement agency, and ICMBio, which runs the country's conservation units. The numbers come from a survey by Ascema Nacional, the association of federal environmental civil servants, published by the news outlet g1. The list covers candidates for state and federal deputy, the Senate, state governor and alternate Senate seats, and counts only those with at least R$ 1 million in fines in their own names.
The violations range from destruction of native vegetation and deforestation to exploitation of protected areas and operation of potentially polluting activities without a license. Seven of the 14 candidates were fined in the state of Pará, mostly in Altamira and São Félix do Xingu, inside or on the edges of the Triunfo do Xingu Environmental Protection Area, one of the parts of the Amazon hardest hit by illegal deforestation in recent years. Most of the fined candidates are men, businessmen and agribusiness professionals from towns along the Amazon deforestation arc, the crescent of cleared land pushing into the rainforest.
The largest fines sit in the Amazon
Daniel Messac de Morais tops the list. A candidate for state deputy in Goiás for the Mobiliza party and a federal civil servant, he has four fines totaling R$ 60.7 million. The largest, of R$ 50 million, was issued in October 2020 in São Félix do Xingu for damage to flora. According to the citation, more than 5,000 hectares were destroyed by fire in the Amazon biome inside the Triunfo do Xingu protection area. A court suspended enforcement of the fine, with no deposit and no conduct adjustment agreement. Two more fines, from July 2019 in Altamira, add R$ 2.1 million and R$ 500,000, and a fourth, from November 2021, is worth R$ 8 million for burning more than 530 hectares of forest in the same protection area. According to g1, Messac was also held in preventive detention in a branch of Operation Poltergeist, which investigated the hiring of ghost employees.
Across Messac, Ulisses Vieira and Tobias Laurindo, the fines with enforcement suspended add up to more than R$ 54 million. Wallace Lopes, a representative of Ascema Nacional, explained what that means in practice. "There is a court dispute under way and the administrative collection was suspended by order of the judiciary," he said.
"While that dispute runs, the fined party is relieved of some administrative restrictions. In many cases they can keep obtaining credit, contracting with the government and carrying out their activities normally until the process is finally decided."
Next on the list come Romero Jatobá Cavalcanti Neto of the PSB, with seven fines worth R$ 17.5 million, and José Lopes Junior of the Republicanos party, with 12 fines worth R$ 8.2 million, both candidates for state deputy. The g1 roster also includes Senate candidate Antonio Galvan of Avante, at R$ 1.6 million, and Daniel Barbosa Santos of Podemos, a candidate for governor, at R$ 1.4 million. G1 says it contacted everyone named and included the responses it received in the report.
A fine does not bar a candidacy
An environmental fine, even a large one, does not make a candidate ineligible. Ineligibility on environmental grounds under Brazil's Ficha Limpa law, the clean-record statute of Complementary Law 64/1990, requires a final criminal conviction, upheld after all appeals, or one issued by a collegiate body, for an environmental crime defined in law. An administrative infraction or fine alone does not meet that bar.
Cristiane Mazzetti, coordinator of the Zero Deforestation front at Greenpeace Brazil, said voters can weigh a candidate's environmental record when judging a candidacy.
"Especially when it comes to those candidates seeking reelection, members of caucuses or parties with recent records of dismantling environmental legislation, including the safeguards that monitor and enforce it, and who may benefit from weakened control of these environmental crimes."
The full Ascema Nacional survey, reported by CartaCapital on September 1, identified 240 candidates linked to 524 environmental citations, with a nominal value above R$ 213 million, or 1.16% of all candidacies. The PL party has the most fined candidates, 35 names linked to 64 citations and R$ 16.3 million. The Christian Democracy party (DC) holds the largest accumulated total, R$ 54 million, with only nine candidates. The first round of the election is scheduled for October 4.