Celso Daniel

Celso Augusto Daniel (April 16, 1951 – January 18, 2002) was the mayor in 2002 for the third time of the city of Santo André in São Paulo, Brazil, as a representative of the Workers' Party (PT). He was kidnapped and murdered in the same year.

A civil engineer who graduated in 1973, from the Engenharia Mauá School, in São Caetano do Sul, he followed an academic career and obtained a master's degree in public administration from the Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV-SP) and a doctorate in political science from the Pontifícia Universidade Católica (PUC-SP). He acted later as a teacher in both universities. As mayor he was connected to the United Nations Urban Management Programme. He received the 2002 Dubai International Awards for Best Practices.

Celso Daniel's murder has not been properly solved by the local authorities, and the conclusions obtained by the investigations are still under dispute; the criminals who kidnapped him have been arrested but theories about their motivation for the crime vary from suggestions that it was a botched kidnapping attempt caused by a misunderstanding of the mayor's identity to theories that the crime was politically motivated and the killers were actually paid by figures of Daniel's own political party, PT. Since the beginning of the investigation, seven witnesses have been found dead. Globoplay created a documentary about him, titled "O Caso Celso Daniel" (2022).

Kidnapping and death

Celso Daniel was fifty years old, when he held the office of mayor of Santo André for the third time, he was kidnapped on the night of January 18, 2002, as he was leaving a steakhouse located in the Jardins region, in São Paulo.

According to the press, the mayor was in an armored Mitsubishi Pajero, in the company of businessman Sérgio Gomes da Silva, also known as "Shadow". The car would have been chased by three other vehicles: a Santana, a Tempra and a Blazer.