It’s been 10 months for Jair Bolsonaro.
He lost his re-election as president of Brazil. Thousands of his supporters stormed Brazilian power positions. And he was barred from holding elected office for seven years.
The scenario could soon worsen: Across Brazil, his critics and supporters speculate that the next twist could simply be his arrest.
Bolsonaro, 68, is caught up in a series of investigations into electoral fraud and falsification that have already landed some of his closest allies in prison and appear to be definitive for him in recent weeks.
But one case may pose the biggest risk to the former president in the short term, and it revolves around an alleged scheme that resembles a small-scale mafia scam: promoting improperly stolen watches at a mall outside Philadelphia.
This month, Brazil’s federal police conducted searches as part of an investigation into what they believe is a grand plot by Bolsonaro and several allies to embezzle valuable gifts he won as president of Saudi Arabia and other countries. In one case, the government accused Bolsonaro’s aide of promoting a diamond Rolex watch and a Patek Philippe watch last year at a jewelry store in the Willow Grove Park mall in Pennsylvania.
Bolsonaro won at least a portion of the $68,000 cash sale, federal police officials said.
In an interview, Bolsonaro’s lawyer, Paulo Cunha Bueno, said whether Bolsonaro tried to sell the diplomatic gifts was irrelevant, as a government committee had ruled in the past that much of the jewelry belonged to Bolsonaro and not the state. “It’s their right,” he said Bueno. No cares.
Other Brazilian law experts said such expensive gifts obviously belonged to the state and that Bolsonaro gave the impression of having legal problems. “For me, it is very unlikely that the president will not be accused of embezzlement,” Miguel Reale said. Brazil’s former justice minister during the government of another president. Such a rate can carry sentences of up to 12 years in prison, he said. “It’s a complicated scenario for the president. “
Two far-right nationalist leaders who attacked their country’s democratic institutions are now accused of embezzling foreign gifts they earned as president.
House Democrats have accused the Trump White House of failing to properly document more than a hundred foreign gifts valued at more than $250,000. At the time of the House report in March, those gifts were, regardless, accounted for, with the exception of two: golf clubs through former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and an 8-foot-tall portrait of Trump through El Salvador’s president, Nayib. Trump later said he discovered at least one of the golf clubs in a locker, and the New York Times discovered the missing one in a back room of a Trump hotel in Miami.
Like Trump, Bolsonaro’s history of foreign gifts is not his only legal problem. Other investigations into Bolsonaro have intensified in recent weeks. Investigations are underway into his possible involvement in the January 8 riots in the Brazilian capital, a scheme to falsify his COVID-19. vaccination records, an alleged plot to upset a Supreme Court justice and allegations that he ordered police to arrest his rival’s voters on Election Day. Last week, a hacker testified before Brazil’s Congress that Bolsonaro had suggested he hack the country’s electoral formula to show he was unsure ahead of the 2022 presidential election.
Bolsonaro denies any wrongdoing in the case and says the accusations are fabricated and that it is political persecution. Each of them could have serious criminal consequences for Bolsonaro.
Bolsonaro’s unrest with foreign gifts began in 2021, when Brazilian customs officials seized more than $3 million worth of undeclared jewelry from the backpack of a Brazilian government official returning from an official layover in Saudi Arabia. The official said the jewelry was a gift from the Saudi government. Afterwards, Jair Bolsonaro tried several times to seize the jewelry, according to several Brazilian media, adding Estadão, which was the first to report on the seizure.
The case opened a federal investigation into Bolsonaro’s handling of foreign gifts, which investigators say are widespread embezzlement and cash laundering.
In one incident, police officials said, Bolsonaro’s personal assistant, Lt. Col. Mauro Cid, tried to sell an 18-karat gold set of the luxury Chopard logo, adding a ring, cufflinks and an Arab rosary, at an auction in New York. At a Valentine’s Day auction in February, Fortuna presented the outfit, which police said was a gift from the Saudi government, for $50,000, with an estimated price tag of up to $140,000. It did not sell.
Cid and other collaborators tried to sell other miscellaneous items, police said, but were only successful with the watches. In June 2022, while in the U. S. after Bolsonaro’s attendance at the Summit of the Americas, Cid sold Rolex and Patek Philippe watches to Precision Watches.
The owner of Precision Watches said Tuesday that the transaction was completed and that he had cooperated with authorities. Fortuna did not respond to a request for comment.
Brazilian law allows presidents to keep certain gifts of a private nature, such as an unpublicized hat, but they cannot have great value and, in particular, cannot constitute a valuable jewel, said Bruno Dantas, president of Brazil’s Council of Ministers. “If it’s a diamond necklace with the president’s call, you can’t have it,” Dantas said.
To help him make a decision, the president requests a government-appointed committee. The panel determined that most of the jewelry Bolsonaro’s advisers had tried to sell was private in nature.
Well, Bolsonaro’s lawyer said this turns jewelry into Bolsonaro assets. “He can sell them,” he said. And if he dies, the property will pass to his heirs. “
Dantas said the government panel made a mistake; “If it’s due to incompetence, the incompetent will be punished for their incompetence,” Dantas said in an interview. “But if it was intentional, then it’s a crime. “
Federal police searched the house and confiscated the phone of the commission’s president, Marcelo da Silva Vieira. The ruling in charge of the case said some evidence suggests Bolsonaro may have ordered the panel to deliver the gifts to him.
The president’s lawyer, Eduardo Kuntz, said that the commission did not make an effort to pronounce itself as it did and that its consumer “would have taken the same resolution a thousand times. “
Bolsonaro had yet to obtain separate authorization from some other government company to sell the gifts, but he didn’t. Investigators said Bolsonaro and his aides also tried to hide the sales by employing money when they could simply or, in some cases, could not. reveal foreign gifts at all. The Rolex sold in Pennsylvania has been revealed as a gift from Saudi Arabia. But the Patek Phillipe watch was never reported, and police officials obtained it from Bahraini officials.
When the Dantas Surveillance Court became aware of the jewels this year, it ordered Bolsonaro to return them.
In March, Frederick Wassef, Bolsonaro’s former lawyer, flew to Pennsylvania and bought the Rolex for $49,000, police said.
However, last week, when asked about the Rolex, Wassef told Brazilian news outlet g1: “I had never noticed this watch. “He added, “I challenge you to convert it. “
The news sites then published the receipt bearing his name. Wassef admitted to buying back the watch, but said Bolsonaro sent it to him.
The foreign jewelry case, as well as most of the investigations into Bolsonaro, are overseen by Alexandre de Moraes, a Supreme Court judge who has one of Brazil’s toughest and most polarizing figures. It has been the main brake on Bolsonaro’s strength for years, appropriating maximum of the cases involving the former president. Last week, he allowed the government access to the foreign bank accounts of Bolsonaro and his wife.
Federal police officials also received WhatsApp messages from Le Cid, showing his efforts to sell the jewelry and deliver cash to Bolsonaro. In a Jan. 18 exchange with a Bolsonaro aide, Cid said in an audio message that his father had $25,000 for the former president. “He would turn it in,” she said. The less movement there is in the count, the better, right?”
Cid has been in prison for months for helping falsify Bolsonaro’s vaccination records. Cid’s lawyer told reporters last week that Bolsonaro had ordered Cid to sell the jewelry.
Bolsonaro denied receiving cash from the sales and said Cid was acting on his own. “My brand is honesty and it will be,” he said. There is nothing concrete that opposes me. “
This article was originally published in The New York Times.