The Brazilian Federal Police launched an operation this Friday against people from the inner circle of former President Jair Bolsonaro, suspected of illegally exporting jewelry, sculptures and other valuable gifts from the country, offered to the Brazilian state by governments of other countries and selling them, also illegally, in the United States. Bolsonaro is not the target of the operation, but communications already intercepted by the federal police point to the former president as the beneficiary of a corruption and embezzlement scheme.
Among the alleged targets of this Friday’s action is Bolsonaro’s former aide-de-camp, Lieutenant Colonel Mauro Cid, who was arrested in May for stealing a Covid-19 vaccine bulletin from his father, General Mauro Lauren Cid. and the Bolsonaro clan’s lawyer, Frederic Wasseff. In Brasília, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, searches and seizures were carried out at the homes of suspects.
According to the investigation by the Federal Police, these and other advisers to the then President sold various gold and diamond items, sculptures and other high-value goods offered to Brazil by foreign countries, namely Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, in order to return these items. money allegedly intended for Bolsonaro. Part of these items, which, in fact, were to be integrated into the collection of the Presidency of the Republic, began to be sold at least last July, when Bolsonaro was still president, and sales continued in the months of January, February and March of this year, the period that he spent in the US after leaving Brazil on the eve of the end of his mandate.
Also, according to the Federal Police, when he left Brazil in such a hurry, Jair Bolsonaro took with him on the presidential plane a lot of valuable things that he embezzled and which he could not take out of the country. Whoever was in charge of the sale of jewelry and art in the US, namely in specialty stores in the city of Miami, was always in agreement with the federal police General Mauro Laurenna Sid, who at that time held a position in the US office of the Brazilian Export Promotion Agency.
Author: Domingos Grilo Serrinha This Correspondent in Brazil
Source: CM Jornal
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