Bento Albuquerque is the newest military officer to be investigated – 03/11/2023 – Politics

Former Minister of Mines and Energy Bento Albuquerque joined the list of military personnel targeted by investigations because of facts related to former President Jair Bolsonaro (PL).

Albuquerque is a squadron admiral in the Navy and was one of the soldiers appointed by Bolsonaro at the beginning of the government. He took over the Ministry of Mines and Energy in January 2019 and remained in office until May 2022.

In October 2021, after being appointed by Bolsonaro himself to represent him on a trip to Saudi Arabia, the then minister and two advisors returned with the jewelry that ended up being seized by the Federal Revenue at the Guarulhos airport.

The minister’s group even brought a second case with jewelry. As shown to Sheet, this package with a watch, pen, cufflinks, ring and a type of rosary, all from the Swiss diamond brand Chopard, went through the tax authorities without being declared and was delivered to Bolsonaro’s personal collection in November 2022, after being kept for a year by Albuquerque in the ministry.

The various unanswered questions about the origin of the gifts, the attempts to recover the seized goods and the reasons for the attempt to circumvent the Tax Authorities on returning to the country placed Albuquerque in the crosshairs of the investigation opened by the Federal Police.

The existence of the second undeclared jewelry case, in turn, led to it being one of the targets of an investigation by the Revenue.

The former minister was summoned to testify at the inquiry into the jewels and speak to investigators next Tuesday (14). Advisor Marcos André Soeiro, another military man now in the sights of Justice, was also called. It was he who carried the seized jewels estimated at R$ 16.5 million.

When asking for the investigation, the Minister of Justice, Flávio Dino (PSB), stated in a letter to the director general of the PF, Andrei Rodrigues, that the attempt to enter with the jewels can “configure crimes against the public administration typified in the Penal Code” .

Albuquerque, among other things, should be asked about Bolsonaro’s participation and level of knowledge in the events that occurred after the return of the delegation from Saudi Arabia.

On Saturday (4), the former minister told Sheet that he passed through customs carrying only personal items and that the case containing his watch, pen, cufflinks and rosary entered the country through the hands of one of the advisors who accompanied him.

“I had already gone through immigration and customs [em Guarulhos] when I was called back because they opened Soeiro’s suitcase and discovered the jewels”, said the former minister. “We didn’t know the contents. We thought they were conventional gifts, not jewelry.”

In a note, on the same day, the minister’s advisory stated that the portfolio adopted measures to forward the collection “to its appropriate legal destination”.

As shown to SheetBolsonaro spoke by telephone with the then Revenue Secretary Julio Cesar Vieira Gomes before the last attempt to recover the jewels, in the last days of the government.

This last attempt, in December 2022, with the right to register in official letters, emails and videos from the closed circuit TV, has as its central figure Colonel Mauro Cid, another military officer close to Bolsonaro with investigations against him.

Cid, for his passage as head of the Presidency’s Orders Assistance, is investigated on several fronts under the report of Minister Alexandre de Moraes, of the STF (Federal Supreme Court).

The PF even indicted him for participating in the leak of the secret inquiry into the hacker attack on the TSE (Superior Electoral Court) systems.

In this investigation, he had his telematic secrecy broken and the investigators found stored in his cloud data from the history of conversations before and during his passage through the Presidency.

In the material, the PF found evidence of suspicious transactions, and Moraes complied with the request to break the bank secrecy of Cid and other servants.

The aide-de-camp also participated in the organization of the live on July 29, 2021 in which Bolsonaro attacked the security of electronic voting machines without evidence and was the target of an investigation opened by the PF.

All these cases are currently gathered in the survey of digital militias.

Participation with Bolsonaro in facts investigated in this case also placed other military personnel in the investigation.

General Luiz Eduardo Ramos, head of three ministries in the Bolsonaro government, was even heard by the PF after being pointed out by one of the participants in the live against the polls as the person to seek, since the beginning of the government, information to attack the electoral system.

The Bolsonarist endeavor to weaken electoral fairness, indicates the PF investigation, also had the support of Abin (Brazilian Intelligence Agency), headed by delegate Alexandre Ramagem and under the tutelage of the GSI (Institutional Security Office), commanded by General Augusto Heleno.

After Moraes’ decision, the military also became the focus of investigations into the January 8 coup attacks carried out by Bolsonarists.

In this case, the testimony of the former commander of the PM operations sector of the Federal District points to members of the Army leadership as responsible for preventing the evacuation of the coup plot in front of the headquarters in Brasília.

The then commander of the Army, Marco Antonio Freire Gomes, and the head of the Planalto Military Command, Gustavo Henrique Dutra, are mentioned by the PM.

Dutra, in turn, as head of the Planalto Command, was also responsible for the BGP (Presidential Guard Battalion).

Another statement, now from a PF server who worked in the Presidency and was at the Planalto Palace during the attacks, indicates the inaction of the troops and lack of command during the invasion.

According to the police officer, members of the BGP even organized a corridor to release the coup plotters when the PM’s Shock Battalion was already acting to end the depredations and arrest those involved.