Police have accused Bolsonaro of usurping public property and money laundering in connection with jewelry given to him by Saudi Arabia

Jair Bolsonaro has several open fronts with a Brazilian judge, involving charges of a wide scope: from falsifying his vaccination card to plotting a coup. This Thursday, one of the cases Minors The matter went up a notch: after more than a year of investigations, the federal police accused the president of attempting to misappropriate some very expensive jewels that the royal family of Saudi Arabia gave to the Brazilian delegation on an official visit to that country in 2021. Bolsonaro was not even on that trip, but he understood it as a personal gift and did everything possible to profit from them, even trying to sell them in the United States. When the scandal broke, he returned them so that they became part of the public collection of the presidency.

Despite everything, the federal police believes there is enough evidence to charge him with at least three crimes: appropriation of public property, money laundering and criminal collaboration, since he involved several people in his circle of trust, including senior government officials. The agents’ report names 11 other people besides Bolsonaro. The prosecutor’s office will have to decide in the coming days whether to file a formal complaint or ask for the case to be archived.

The jewelry included Rolex watches, earrings, a type of Arabic rosary and a luxurious gold and diamond necklace from Chopard. According to estimates by police experts, they were worth about 5 million reais ($900,000), somewhat less than the amount initially published by the Brazilian press. In any case, the scandal was not so much in the value of the gifts, but in the fact that the Brazilian delegation tried to bring them into Brazil without declaring them or paying the corresponding taxes.

The former president’s confidants even tried to auction off some of the jewellery in the United States. Eventually, when everything came to light, the Union Court of Accounts clarified that these were state gifts and Bolsonaro would have to return them immediately, and this happened a few days later. The former president’s allies believe there is no case because there was no loss to the state treasury and speak of baseless persecution.

In the list of accomplices in the Jewels plot, one name stands out above the others, that of Lieutenant Colonel Mauro Cid. He was Bolsonaro’s right-hand man during his tenure as president, the errand boy to whom he would entrust the most delicate bureaucratic tasks. Bolsonaro and Cid are also together in another scandal, that of the falsification of vaccination cards.

A known denier, Bolsonaro has always publicly pretended that he has not been vaccinated against Covid-19, but there are indications that he has falsified his vaccination card. Also that of some relatives and closest aides, so that everyone could enter the United States, thus violating the law that requires vaccination. The police took strong action and arrived in the town where, according to the Ministry of Health’s computer system, Bolsonaro was vaccinated: Duque de Caxias, on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. This Thursday the police searched the mansion of the former mayor, a well-known Bolsonaro supporter, and found 200,000 reais in cash (about 34,000 euros). Everything indicates that there was a big scheme to sell counterfeits. Bolsonaro and the CID were already accused a few months ago of falsifying data and forming a criminal connection, but as new information emerges, agents are now investigating whether the Bolsonaro clan set up this conspiracy or whether they took advantage of a mechanism that already existed.

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