Government blames Bolsonaro’s management for not finding furniture; Michelle promises legal action

The Lula government blamed the management of former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL) for the lack of “asset control” over furniture at the Palácio da Alvorada. In a statement, released in the early evening of Wednesday (20), Planalto said that the purchase of new furniture was “essential” to “recompose the Palace’s environment in accordance with its architectural design”.

Earlier, the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo revealed that the Presidency of the Republic found the 261 items of furniture, whose “disappearance” was attributed by Lula to the Bolsonaro couple. The former first lady, Michelle Bolsonaro (PL), promised to take “legal measures” and said that the “real reason for the slanderous accusations” about the Presidency’s assets served as a “smokescreen” for the current government to “buy luxurious furniture on a pure whim and without bidding.”

“The report, which says that 261 items had not been located, was issued on January 4, 2023, concluding work that began on 11/18/2022, carried out during the Bolsonaro government, and completed by the previous government team. This was the information received at the beginning of this administration. In other words, the previous administration was the one who did not know where the items were, some of them abandoned in deposits outside the Palácio da Alvorada and without effective asset control”, argued the Lula government in the statement.

According to Planalto, the search for all items was completed in the second half of 2023. “The furniture that was purchased to facilitate the president’s move to Palácio do Alvorada was essential to restore the Palace’s environment in accordance with its architectural design, and are not necessarily of the same nature as the items in the cited report. They were purchased to restore the Palace’s deteriorating environment, as was shown even by journalists”, says the note.

Michelle promises legal action after furniture allegations

For the former first lady, “for a long time this government wanted to attribute the disappearance of furniture from Alvorada to us, even insinuating that it had been stolen during our management”. In the early afternoon, former president Jair Bolsonaro stated that “all the furniture was in Alvorada” and pointed out that “Lula committed a false report of theft”.

In a statement, the president of PL Mulher stated that “at the beginning of the Bolsonaro government, the furniture from the official residence was placed in Alvorada’s own warehouses to be replaced by the couple’s personal furniture – which is not prohibited by current legislation”.

“In fact, they always knew this was a lie, but they wanted a smokescreen to distract from the news that they would spend the people’s money to buy luxurious furniture on a whim and without bidding. This is a recurring technique of theirs,” said Michelle.

“Despite all the emotional distress this caused me, I was always sure that God would bring the truth to light, not only in this case, but in all the false accusations that these people used by evil have made against us. Now that the truth has come to light, legal measures will be adopted”, he added.