'Ostentatious mayor' removed from office for the 5th time on suspicion of corruption.

At the request of the Public Prosecutor's Office of Maranhão, the court ordered the immediate removal of Lidiane Leite da Silva from the mayor's office in Bom Jardim for 120 days; the decision also mandates that the City Council swear in the vice-mayor, Malrinete dos Santos Matos, within 24 hours; the mayor is accused of being part of a scheme to embezzle public funds that should have been used for education, allegedly causing a loss of R$ 1,3 billion to the public coffers of Bom Jardim.

August 11, 2016, 20:18 PMUpdated June 29, 2018, 22:53 pm

At the request of the Public Prosecutor's Office of Maranhão, the Court ordered the immediate removal of Lidiane Leite da Silva from the mayor's office in Bom Jardim for 120 days; the decision also mandates that the City Council swear in the vice-mayor, Malrinete dos Santos Matos, within 24 hours; the mayor is accused of being part of a scheme to embezzle public funds that should have been used for education, allegedly causing a loss of R$ 1,3 billion to the public coffers of Bom Jardim (Photo: Leonardo Lucena).

Jorge Vieira's Blog - At the request of the Public Prosecutor's Office of Maranhão, through the Public Prosecutor's Office of the District of Bom Jardim, the Court ordered the immediate removal of Lidiane Leite da Silva from the position of mayor of the municipality of Bom Jardim for a period of 120 days. The decision also mandates that the City Council swear in the vice-mayor, Malrinete dos Santos Matos, as head of the Municipal Executive within 24 hours.

The decision responds to a request for reconsideration from public prosecutor Fábio Santos de Oliveira, head of the Bom Jardim District, filed this Tuesday, the 9th, for a Public Civil Action for Administrative Impropriety, filed on August 26, 2015, in which the removal of Lidiane Leite was requested.

According to the lawsuit, one of those dealing with the alleged misappropriation of public funds that should have been used for education during Lidiane Leite's administration, the criminal scheme is said to have caused a loss of R$ 1.377.299,77 to the public coffers of Bom Jardim through fraud in a bidding process for hiring an engineering company to renovate schools in the town center and rural areas of the municipality.

The request for preliminary removal from office had been made by the Public Prosecutor's Office of Maranhão, due to the damage caused by the mayor to the municipal public coffers. The same action requested the freezing of her assets and reimbursement to the public treasury.

However, the court declared the request inadmissible because, at the time, Lidiane Leite had been removed from office by legislative decree. She returned to her position as mayor of Bom Jardim this Tuesday, after the president of the City Council, Arão Sousa Silva, unilaterally revoked the decree.

In her decision, Judge Leoneide Delfina Barros Amorim, head of the 2nd Court of Zé Doca and responsible for the District of Bom Jardim, emphasizes that the Public Prosecutor's Office proved that, on several occasions, Lidiane Leite omitted and falsified information to mask irregularities in the bidding process. "Furthermore, more than a year after being declared ineligible to be mayor of the Municipality of Bom Jardim, she managed to return to the position in an unclear manner," she adds.