Brazil’s Bolsonaro formally accused of money laundering for diamonds from Saudi Arabia
SAO PAULO — The police indictment of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro for money laundering and criminal association in connection with undeclared diamonds from Saudi Arabia marked the far-right leader’s second formal accusation with more potentially in store.
Two sources with knowledge of the case confirmed the indictment by Federal Police, which followed a formal accusation in March that Bolsonaro falsified his COVID-19 vaccination certificate. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly.
Brazil’s Supreme Court has yet to receive the police report with the latest indictment. Once it does, the country’s prosecutor-general, Paulo Gonet, will analyze the document and decide whether to file charges and force Bolsonaro to stand trial.
The accusation dramatically raises the legal threats facing the divisive ex-leader that are applauded by his opponents but denounced as political persecution by his supporters.
Bolsonaro did not immediately comment, but he and his lawyers have previously denied any wrongdoing in both those cases as well as other investigations. One is probing his possible involvement in inciting an uprising in capital Brasilia on Jan. 8, 2023, that sought to oust his successor from power.
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Last year, Federal Police accused Bolsonaro of attempting to sneak in diamond jewelry reportedly worth $3 million and selling two luxury watches.
Police in August said that Bolsonaro received cash from the nearly $70,000 sale of two luxury watches he received as gifts from Saudi Arabia. Brazil requires its citizens arriving by plane from abroad to declare goods worth more than $1,000 and, for any amount above that exemption, pay a tax equal to 50% of their value.
The jewelry would have been exempt from tax had it been a gift from Saudi Arabia to Brazil, but not Bolsonaro’s to keep for himself. Rather, it would have been added to the presidential collection.
The investigation showed that Mauro Cid, Bolsonaro’s former aide-de-camp who allegedly falsified his COVID-19 records, in June 2022 sold a Rolex watch and a Patek Philippe watch to a store in the U.S for a total of $68,000. They were gifted by Saudi Arabia’s government in 2019. Cid later signed a plea bargain with authorities and confirmed it all.
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Flávio Bolsonaro, the former president’s eldest son and a sitting senator, said on X after Thursday’s indictment that his father was being persecuted in a “blatant and shameless” manner.
In addition to Bolsonaro, police indicted 10 others, including Cid and two lawyers, Frederick Wassef and Fábio Wajngarten, according to one of the sources. Wassef said in a statement that he didn’t have access to the final report of the investigation, and decried selective leaks to the media of an investigation that is supposed to be proceeding under seal.
“I am going through all of this solely for practicing law in defense of Jair Bolsonaro,” he wrote.
On X, Wajngarten said police have found no evidence implicating him. “The Federal Police knows I did nothing related to what they are investigating, but they still want to punish me because I provide unwavering and permanent defense for former President Bolsonaro,” he said.
Bolsonaro retains staunch allegiance among his political base, as shown by an outpouring of support in February, when an estimated 185,000 people clogged Sao Paulo’s main boulevard to protest what the former president calls political persecution.
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His critics, particularly members of his rival President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s political party, have cheered every advance of investigations and repeatedly called for his arrest.
Bolsonaro, a 69-year-old former army captain, started his political career as a staunch advocate of Brazil’s military dictatorship and was a lawmaker for nearly three decades. When he ran for the presidency for the first time, in 2018, he was widely dismissed as an outsider and too radically conservative. But he surprised analysts with a decisive victory, in no small part due to his self-portrayal as an upstanding citizen in the years following a sprawling corruption probe that ensnared hundreds of politicians and executives.
Bolsonaro insulted adversaries from his earliest days in office while garnering critics with his divisive policies, attacks on the Supreme Court and efforts to undermine health restrictions during the pandemic. He lost his reelection bid in the closest finish since Brazil’s return to democracy in 1985.
Last year, Brazil’s top electoral court ruled that Bolsonaro abused his presidential powers during his 2022 reelection bid, which rendered him ineligible for any elections until 2030. The case focused on a meeting during which Bolsonaro used government staffers, the state television channel and the presidential palace in Brasilia to tell foreign ambassadors that the country’s electronic voting system was rigged.
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