Brazil’s divisive former president has categorically denied any wrongdoing.
RIO DE JANEIRO. La Brazilian police searched the homes of Jair Bolsonaro’s allies accused of reselling gifts and jewelry from foreign dignitaries for the former president’s “illicit enrichment,” a court ruled yesterday.
The divisive right-winger categorically denied any wrongdoing, and his lawyers said he “never appropriated or misappropriated any public property,” in a statement from the G1 news site.
The scandal erupted earlier this year, when Estado de Sao Paulo newspaper reported that customs officials seized a set of jewelry from a government aide who tried to bring them into the country by displaying them in his backpack in 2021.
Brazilian law prohibits public officials from keeping gifts.
Elements of the police investigation were revealed in a ruling by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes to justify seeking arrest warrants made through federal police at the homes of Bolsonaro’s former collaborators.
“The accumulated evidence demonstrated (the existence) during the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro, of a network to embezzle large assets that were presented to him,” the sentence reads.
“Beyond allowing an unacceptable enrichment of the president of the republic . . . it is conceivable that the Brazilian head of state was co-opted through foreign nations through those assets,” the investigators said.
They reported goods placed in “a suitcase carried on the presidential plane on December 30,” when Bolsonaro left Brazil for the United States, two days before the inauguration of his leftist successor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who defeated him in the October 2022 elections. .
Among the state gifts were two sculptures unveiled by the Bahraini government on a state scale in 2021, as well as gifts from Saudi Arabia, plus a watch and fountain pen of the Swiss luxury Chopard logo, according to researchers.
One of those suspected of reselling those gifts is Mauro Cid, a former senior official of Bolsonaro, who has been detained since May for falsifying vaccination certificates against covid-19.
According to investigators, Le Cid spoke in an audio message of “$ 25,000 in cash” that would be for the former president after the sale of some real estate.
Known for his brash taste that earned him the nickname “tropical Trump,” Bolsonaro, the former army captain-turned-congressman, rose to fame as a presidential candidate in 2018 among a gambling electorate disgusted with corruption and economic mismanagement.
After presiding over a presidency marked by scandals, in addition to his handling of Covid-19, Bolsonaro has now been barred for 8 years over his unproven allegations of major fraud in the country’s electoral system.