PF agents will go to the US to investigate the sale of jewelry received by Bolsonaro

Investigation

Last August, conversations between Mauro Cid and his father came to light, which include photographs of the pieces received by Bolsonaro

The Federal Police will send a group of agents to the United States to investigate the alleged sale of jewelry received by Jair Bolsonaro when he was President of the Republic. The items were received by the Brazilian as head of state, and would have been sold in the USA with the help of Army General Mauro Lourena Cid, and his son, Bolsonaro’s former aide-de-camp Mauro Cid. The information is from the Terra website.

Only after the trip will the Federal Police intend to conclude the investigations, currently underway at the Federal Supreme Court (STF), under the report of Minister Alexandre de Moraes.

Last August, conversations between Mauro Cid and his father came to light, which include photographs of the pieces received by Bolsonaro. In one of them, the general’s face appears reflected in the glass of the box that contained the official gift – in this case, sculptures of a boat and a palm tree.

The sculptures were received by Bolsonaro in November 2021, during the Arab-Brazilian Chamber of Commerce Business Seminar, in Bahrain. The investigations into the sale of jewelry received by Bolsonaro began with the revelation, at least Estadãothat an advisor to the former president tried to enter Brazil illegally with jewelry.

In a statement to the Federal Police in March, Mauro Cid admitted to having participated in the sale of two luxury watches, one Rolex and the other from the Swiss manufacturer Patek Philippe. He also said that part of the money from the sale of gifts abroad would have been passed on by him to Bolsonaro.

The former president would have received 68 thousand dollars – which he denies.

Since last year, the American FBI has collaborated with investigations, based on a cooperation agreement signed with Brazil.

According to investigators, it is possible to say that when leaving the country in December 2022, Bolsonaro took with him four sets of foreign gifts. A box of jewelry received from Saudi Arabia appeared in a luxury goods store in New York shortly after, in early 2023.

Information about the PF agents’ trip to New York was published by the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo and confirmed by Estadão.

Last August, the PF launched an operation to investigate the alleged sale of jewelry received by Bolsonaro. The investigation targeted General Mauro Cesar Lourena Cid; second lieutenant Osmar Crivelatti, considered his right-hand man; and Bolsonaro’s former lawyer Frederick Wassef.

The operation was named after Luke 12:2, a biblical verse according to which “there is nothing hidden that will not be discovered, or hidden that will not be known”.

Bolsonaro and his wife, former first lady Michelle Bolsonaro, gave a statement to the PF in the jewelry case at the end of last August. They remained silent. In March last year, when the case came to light, Bolsonaro denied wrongdoing.

“I am being accused of a gift that I neither asked for nor received. There is no illegality on my part. I never practiced illegality,” he said, in an interview with the cable TV channel CNN.

The report contacted the former president through his lawyer, but there was no response.

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