More than $21,000 in a modest restaurant, almost $11,000 in a pastry shop the day after his son’s wedding, and about $1,700 in ice cream parlors: The expenses of former president Jair Bolsonaro with the presidential credit card amaze Brazil.
The extracts from the cards of the presidency, corresponding to his four years in office (2019-2022), were published this week on an official website of the government of his successor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who has been in power since past January 1.
The leftist president, who assumed the presidency for the third time, began to lift a 100-year-old secret imposed by his far-right predecessor on thousands of official documents. A total of 27.6 million reais -5.4 million dollars- were spent with that card.
If adjustments for inflation are taken into account, spending is almost half of what was done during Lula’s first term (2003-2007), although that of the leftist leader was mainly related to accommodation for trips abroad.
But this is not the case of Bolsonaro, who did not make foreign relations a priority and who during his tenure he boasted on several occasions that he had not spent “not a penny” from the presidential credit card unlike its predecessors.
Nafta and hotels
The news portal UOLfor example, discovered that they spent 1.2 million reais (about $235,000) in the 28 days of official holidays of the former president at the end of the years 2019, 2020 and 2021.
On January 2, 2022 a payment of more than 71,000 reais was made (almost $14,000) at a gas station in the state of Santa Catarina (south), where Bolsonaro caused a scandal by jet-skiing while floods affected various regions.
Presidential credit card too was used to pay 1.46 million reais (more than 280,000 dollars) for four years in a luxury hotel in Guarujá, a seaside resort near São Paulo (southeast).
According to the website of the news site G1that hotel hosted members of the presidential team while Bolsonaro stayed in a military complex.
Large bill in a modest restaurant
The highest spending on food is also the one that raises the most questions: 109,266 reais (about $21,400) spent in one go in a modest restaurant in Boa Vista, in the Amazonian state of Roraima (north).
The amount is enough to order more than 2,000 times the most expensive dish in the place: roasted chicken with cassava flour (cassava), at the modest price of 50 reais (9.8 dollars).
The credit card of the presidency also was used to pay more than 362,000 reais ($71,000) for four years in a bakery in Rio de Janeiro.
account includes 55,000 reais paid in one go the day after Eduardo’s wedding, the third son of Bolsonaro, and 33,000 reais on the eve of a motorcycle procession organized by supporters of the former president through the streets of the city. Total, 8,600 reais were spent (almost 1,700 dollars) in ice cream parlors, in 62 purchases in five establishments.
With information from AFP