MP Eleitoral Withdraws Challenge to Ricardo Salles’s Senate Registration

Overview

• On Friday the regional substitute prosecutor José Ricardo Meirelles told the Tribunal Regional Eleitoral de São Paulo that Ricardo Salles provided the missing certidões and the Procuradoria withdrew its request to reject his registration.
• The documents relate to an Ação Civil Pública filed over a 2022 motociata with Jair Bolsonaro that the Ministério Público Estadual says alleged breaches of sanitary rules, and the certidões were filed in the 4ª Vara Cível Federal de São Paulo.
• With the procedural defect corrected, the TRE‑SP will now decide whether to defer or approve Salles’s candidacy, and the MPE said it will wait for that judgment.
• Salles and his defense said the omission was a cartório error and hailed the MPE’s move as confirmation of his eligibility; he also faces a separate TRE‑SP sanction ordering a R$10,000 fine for earlier campaign content.
• Recent polls place Salles in the mid‑teens of voter intention in São Paulo behind Simone Tebet and Marina Silva, so the pending court decision is legally important but may have limited short‑term impact on his standing in the race.