Bolsonaro and former head of Revenue talked about jewelry – 08/03/2023 – Politics

Jair Bolsonaro (PL) and the then head of the Federal Revenue Julio Cesar Vieira Gomes spoke by telephone in December about the release of jewelry presented by Saudi Arabia and seized at customs at the airport in Guarulhos (SP).

People with knowledge of the episode confirmed to Sheet the occurrence of the call, which represents the first indication of the direct participation of the then President of the Republic in the attempt to release the material valued at R$ 16.5 million.

There is only disagreement about who would have made the connection, whether from Bolsonaro to Julio Cesar or the opposite.

This conversation between them contradicts the version that the former president presented during an event over the weekend in the United States, when he tried to disassociate himself from the case, saying he had not been aware of the gifts barred at customs and denying the attempt to bring them illegally. .

One of the versions of the conversation is that the then Federal Revenue Secretary called Bolsonaro and informed him of the existence of the jewels seized at the Guarulhos customs.

From then on, the former aide-de-camp and Bolsonaro’s trusted man, Colonel Mauro Cid, would have been assigned to settle with Julio Cesar the bureaucratic procedures for the clearance of the material.

According to this version, Bolsonaro would not have known about the existence of the jewels until the Revenue Secretary called.

The other version of the case also confirms the phone call between the two, but claims that it was Bolsonaro who called Julio Cesar, days after Mauro Cid made an initial phone call asking for an investigation into the existence of jewelry seized by the Revenue.

The two versions coincide in the sense that the topic of the conversation between the President of the Republic and the head of Revenue was to release the jewels for later delivery to the Planalto Palace.

When contacted, Mauro Cid and Julio Cesar declined to comment. A Sheet failed to speak to Bolsonaro’s defense.

The seizure of jewelry from Saudi Arabia at the Federal Revenue Service was revealed by the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo last Friday (3).

The existence of a second set of jewels and their trip to Bolsonaro’s private collection was revealed by Sheet on Sunday (5).

Documents and reports confirm that at the end of December there was a mobilization in the Presidency and in the Revenue in an attempt to release the material seized by the Revenue.

On the 27th and 28th, a letter was sent to the Revenue Service in which Cid requests the release of the jewelry and an email from the head of the Revenue Service to the agency’s superintendence in São Paulo, also in the sense of releasing the material.

Cid’s letter weakens the version that Bolsonaro only found out in December of the existence of the jewels, since the colonel mentions in the document that “it took months to obtain the supporting documents, as required by the Federal Revenue Note,” to obtain the release .

The operation at the top of the Executive culminated in the dispatch on December 29 — two days before the end of the Bolsonaro administration — of Navy Sergeant Jairo Moreira da Silva to Guarulhos, on a Brazilian Air Force plane. He was unable to remove the material.

Federal Revenue officials in São Paulo, especially at the airport’s customs, resisted attempts to release the jewels on the grounds that there was no proof that the material would be destined for public property, among other formal irregularities.

The case began in October 2021, when a delegation led by the then Minister of Mines and Energy Bento Albuquerque returned from an official trip to Saudi Arabia. Military man Marcos André dos Santos Soeiro tried to enter the country with the jewels in his personal luggage, without customs declaration. He ended up stopped at Guarulhos airport, and the material was seized.

The Revenue claims to have guided the government on how to clear the material, which could be released without paying a tax if it was destined for public property, but that this never happened.

Documents after the seizure show that the Ministry of Mines and Energy tried, between October and November 2021, to recover the jewels, claiming that they would be analyzed for incorporation “into the private collection of the President of the Republic or the public collection of the Presidency of the Republic”.

After these attempts failed, in December 2022, with Bolsonaro already defeated and a few days away from leaving the Presidency, the last offensive was carried out to recover the jewels.

The government’s supposed resistance to declaring jewelry and watches valued at BRL 16.5 million as a public good directly contradicts the understanding established by the Federal Court of Auditors since 2016, according to which only gifts that are for personal use or of a very personal nature can be integrate the private collection of a president.

The Customs Regulation (Decree 6.759/2009) and normative instructions from the Federal Revenue also do not allow for state gifts to be transported in personal luggage.

In that case, it would be necessary to declare to the customs that the destination was private, with payment of 50% of taxes on the value that exceeds US$ 1,000 (a little more than R$ 5,000).

Bolsonaro spoke on the subject on Saturday (4), after an event in the United States.

He said he has neither asked for nor received any kind of jewelry gift from the Saudi Arabian government.

“I am now being crucified in Brazil for a gift that I did not receive. I saw in some newspapers maliciously saying that I tried to bring illegal jewelry to Brazil. There is no such thing,” he said.

According to him, the Presidency notified the customs. “So far so good, nothing much, in my opinion, the customs could have handed it over. It would go to the collection, it would be handed over to the first lady. And what does the legislation say? She could use it, she couldn’t dispose of it . That’s all, nothing more.”

This Wednesday (8), the deputy attorney general of the Public Prosecutor’s Office at the TCU (Union Court of Auditors) sent a representation to the court with a request to investigate the jewelry case.

The entourage led by Bento Albuquerque even brought a second set of jewelry from Saudi Arabia that was not seized by the Revenue.

As shown to Sheetthe other package, which includes a watch, pen, cufflinks, ring and a type of rosary, all from the Swiss diamond brand Chopard and supposedly destined for Bolsonaro, was in the luggage of one of the members of the entourage and was not intercepted by the Revenue.

On the last November 29th, practically a month before Bolsonaro’s term ends, the special advisor of the Ministry of Mines and Energy Antônio Carlos Ramos de Barros Mello delivered the items to the Planalto Palace. In Mello’s version, they were under the custody of the folder.

This case is also being investigated by the PF and is being investigated by the Federal Revenue.

This Wednesday, Bolsonaro confirmed to the CNN TV network that this second package of jewels was incorporated into his private collection and denied illegality.