(Brasilia) Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro benefited from a system of illegal sales of jewelry and luxury items offered in Brazil and valued at a total of $1.2 million, according to the conclusions of a police investigation published Monday.
Last week, federal police recommended indicting Mr Bolsonaro and 11 others for criminal conspiracy, money laundering and embezzlement, for events that occurred between October 2019 and the end of the far-right leader’s term in 2022.
Jair Bolsonaro, who denounces the plethora of judicial investigations against him as “persecution”, denies having committed any crime in the management of the jewels.
According to the police, the “group under investigation acted to embezzle from the Brazilian public treasury several high-value gifts received by former President Jair Bolsonaro.” […] during international travel and given by foreign authorities”.
The operation aimed to sell the jewels abroad “with the aim of promoting the illicit enrichment of the former president,” the investigation indicates.
Some of the pieces were sold “and the amounts obtained were converted into cash and entered into the personal assets of the former president […] without going through the formal banking system,” adds the report submitted to the Federal Supreme Court (STF).
The value of the gifts “amounts to $1.22 million,” police said.
Judge Alexandre de Moraes of the STF gave the Attorney General’s Office 15 days to decide whether to formally charge the former president.
The Brazilian press first broke the story in March 2023, after tax officials seized jewelry found in the backpack of a Bolsonaro government official returning from an official trip to the Middle East in 2021.
Among the gifts were a ring, necklace and earrings from the Swiss brand Chopard worth about $828,000, as well as gold and diamond Chopard and Rolex watches and other jewelry, according to the nearly 500-page police report.
After the affair was revealed, advisers to Mr Bolsonaro recovered and returned to the state some of the items sold, the report said.
According to the federal police, the money obtained from the sale of the jewels “could have been used to cover Bolsonaro’s expenses” in the United States, where he stayed for a few months after his term.