The leather case is lined with dark velvet. Inside are placed sparkling jewels: a pair of earrings, a ring, a watch and a necklace adorned with dozens of pendants encrusted with diamonds. The set, from the Swiss jeweler Chopard, is estimated at nearly 3 million euros. Its recipient, rather unexpected, turns out to be Jair Bolsonaro.
The “diamond affair” has been making headlines in Brazil for two weeks. The former president is accused by the press of having tried to illegally bring this set of jewels back into the country, a gift from the Saudi government. It embarrasses at the highest point a Jair Bolsonaro back to the wall, still in Florida and threatened with justice.
It all starts in October 2021. Then President, Jair Bolsonaro dispatches to Riyadh his Minister of Mines and Energy, Navy Admiral Bento Albuquerque, to attend in his place the summit of the “Green Middle East”, promoted by the Crown Prince Mohammed Ben Salman, known as “MBS”, to promote Saudi Arabia’s climate change initiatives.
On their return, on October 26, customs officers at Guarulhos International Airport, in Sao Paulo, made a surprising discovery: hidden in the bottom of the backpack of a soldier, adviser to Minister Albuquerque, they found a case of Chopard jewelry. . The whole thing is worth well over $1,000 and should have been declared beforehand. It is immediately seized by the tax authorities.
“An image of a man of the people, seriously tarnished”
The set is actually a very generous gift offered by the Saudi authorities to Jair Bolsonaro and his wife Michelle. But the far-right president – beaten since then in the 2022 presidential election by Lula – obviously did not want to return these jewels to the Public Treasury or pay high customs duties (i.e. 50% of the value of the product). He would therefore have ordered his minister to discreetly smuggle “his” diamonds into Brazil.
The matter does not end there. For more than a year, Bolsonaro did everything to get his hands on the jewelry. On several occasions, trusted men were sent to negotiate with customs at the airport. On December 29, 2022, three days before the end of the term, a Marine sergeant got off an army plane in Guarulhos and threatened customs officers: “You can’t leave anything old to the next [gouvernement], you have to take everything and take it away! » I just don’t.
Revealed in early March by the newspaper state, the scandal continues to rebound. The press has brought to light the existence of a second set of luxury items, with an estimated value of 70,000 euros, which Jair Bolsonaro would have, this time, managed to successfully smuggle to Brazil. Since then, the federal police, the Court of Auditors and the prosecution have taken up the case. Several parliamentarians are in favor of opening a commission of inquiry.
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