PL leader registered sale of property 11 days after PF operation seized R$430 thousand

The leader of the PL in the Chamber, Sóstenes Cavalcante, registered on December 30th the deed of sale for a property in Ituiutaba (MG), 11 days after a Federal Police operation found R$430,000 in his apartment in Brasília. The deputy argued, at the time, that the cash was the result of the sale of a house in the municipality of Triângulo Mineiro.

The house, located on Avenida 29, in the center of Ituiutaba, had been purchased by Sóstenes in February 2023, for R$310,000. According to the deed, obtained by GLOBO, Sóstenes sold the property to Thiago Ferreira de Paula, a lawyer whose office is less than 500 meters from the house. The sale was registered with a notary in the amount of R$500 thousand. The information was first published by the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo and confirmed by GLOBO.

On the eve of New Year’s Eve this year, according to the deed, Sóstenes stated that he had “already received” the amount, on November 24th, about a month earlier, “with cash”. According to the deputy and the lawyer who purchased the property, it was on that date that the “celebration of the purchase and sale contract” took place, although the first registration with a notary only took place after the PF operation the following month.

The document also states that Sóstenes and the lawyer signed the deed “through the e-notary platform”, which allows the act to be carried out without the need to appear at the notary’s office. The deed does not detail where the contract was signed. When contacted, they did not answer GLOBO’s questions.

On the day of the PF operation, in December, Sóstenes stated that he had “recently received the money” for the property transaction, and said that due to “an oversight” he had stopped making the deposit into his bank account.

— I recently received the money and with this rush of work I ended up not making the deposit. Even (with) part of it, I’m thinking about doing other business. It was simply an oversight. Nobody takes illicit money and puts it in the house. I took the money and kept it — explained Sóstenes at the time.

The house sits on a 275 square meter plot and has two suites, an office area, an electronic gate and a garage with space for three cars. Sóstenes, who says he carried out a series of renovations on the property, had advertised the house in a local brokerage at the beginning of 2025 for R$690,000 – that is, more than double the price for which he had purchased it in 2023.

Until November 12th, records on social media showed that the house was still for sale. The ad had the phone number of pastor Eraldo Cavalcante, Sóstenes’ father and leader of an Assembly of God church in Ituiutaba.

Sóstenes was born in Alagoas, but lived in Ituiutaba in his youth. According to the parliamentarian himself, he served as leader of the student union at his school, in the municipality of Triângulo Mineiro, before becoming an evangelical pastor. In 2022, he and his father, Pastor Eraldo, were honored with the title of “citizen of Ituiutaba” by the City Council. On that occasion, Sóstenes even promised that he would allocate a parliamentary amendment of R$1 million to the city, which is outside Rio, his state of operation.

In the 2022 election, the last one he contested, Sóstenes declared that he had only R$4,900 in his bank accounts and no other assets. A few months later, in February 2023, he appeared as the buyer of the house in Ituiutaba, for R$310,000, together with his wife, the gospel singer Isleia Cavalcante, to whom he is married in partial community of property.