About this archive

What it contains

• Casos (cases): 48 court and administrative proceedings involving Chega officials, each shown at its exact procedural stage. All count towards the total, including dismissals, acquittals and debt-enforcement cases; the breakdown by stage is always shown. Facts that predate the person joining Chega are flagged and counted like the rest.
• Decisões (decisions): 48 decisions by the Constitutional Court, the Supreme Administrative Court, the Political Accounts Authority (Entidade das Contas), the National Elections Commission (CNE), the media regulator (ERC) and Parliament’s Transparency Committee. Not all are sanctions: some are audit reports or the opening of proceedings.
• Sinais (signals): 113 things party leaders said, proposed or did against the Constitution, the press, the courts, opponents, minorities or democratic memory, and documented links to the far right. A signal is not a crime.
• Dinheiro (money): what the official accounts show about the party’s and its campaigns’ income, spending and donations.
• Pessoas (people): 46 pages with each person’s offices and everything in the archive about them.

Method

• A fact is only published with a primary source (court ruling, prosecutor’s statement, official record, parliamentary record, official biography) or with two independent reference news outlets. Several stories from the same news agency, or outlets that only repeat another outlet, count as one source. One exception favours the person concerned: a dismissal or an acquittal reported by a single reference outlet is published, attributed to that outlet.
• Every case is shown at its exact stage. Being a formal suspect is not being charged; being charged is not being convicted. Everyone is presumed innocent unless convicted. Entries only report what happened: an appeal is shown once it exists, never as a possibility.
• No adjectives or value judgements in factual text. Quotations are verbatim, checked against the source.
• Victims of sexual crimes, and minors in any case, are never identifiable; other victims are named only when the case is publicly known by their name. Sexual crimes and crimes against minors only appear once there is a formal charge, except when the facts were committed in public by an office-holder (for example, in Parliament), and never with anything that identifies the minors.
• Dismissals and acquittals are always shown. Corrections are made publicly and logged.

The full rules (in Portuguese) are on the Método page.

Reading a case: the stage labels

Inquérito

Investigation: the Public Prosecutor’s Office is investigating. No one has been charged.

Arguido

Formal suspect in a criminal investigation. Not a charge.

Imunidade levantada

Parliament (or a regional assembly) lifted a member’s immunity so that they can be questioned as a formal suspect. Not a charge.

Acusado

Charged (indicted) by the Public Prosecutor’s Office.

Instrução

Pre-trial phase: a judge decides whether the charges go to trial.

Em julgamento

On trial.

Condenado

Convicted by a court.

Condenado · recorreu

Convicted; an appeal has been lodged.

Condenado · confirmado em recurso

Convicted; the conviction was upheld on appeal.

Arquivado · Não pronunciado · Absolvido

Closed without charges, not sent to trial, or acquitted. They stay visible and count towards the total, at their stage.

Absolvido em recurso

Acquitted on appeal.

Absolvição anulada em recurso

An acquittal was overturned on appeal and a retrial was ordered.

Cível · condenado

Ordered by a civil court to pay damages. Not a criminal conviction.

Cível · execução por dívida

Civil debt-enforcement proceedings. Not a criminal case.

Coima aplicada

Administrative fine. Not a criminal conviction.

Perda de mandato · ação proposta

The Public Prosecutor’s Office has asked an administrative court to remove an elected official from office. Not a criminal case.

Other labels

Anterior ao Chega

The facts predate the person joining Chega. Flagged and counted like the rest.

noticiado a

Only the date of the news report is known, not the date of the act.

Nas listas do Chega

Elected on a Chega list; the sources do not say whether the person is a member.

How to cite

Please cite the original source, which is linked on every entry, and, if you use the archive, credit «Já Chega! (jachega.org)» with the address of the entry. Every entry shows the date it was last checked. Each entry can also be printed or saved as a PDF, with all source addresses written out.

Open data

The data behind the site is available as JSON and CSV on the Dados abertos section, and copies of the official documents cited are on the Documentos page.

Who we are and contact

The archive is made by a collective of citizens with no links to any party, with the help of artificial intelligence, which finds and reads sources, drafts entries and checks quotes, figures and dates against the sources; the rules and editorial decisions are the collective’s. It has no advertising or sponsors and does not collect data about its visitors: no forms, no cookies. Contact: nuncamais@jachega.org (we answer in Portuguese or English).