Brazil’s federal police have recommended that former President Jair Bolsonaro be criminally charged over a scheme to embezzle jewelry he received as gifts from foreign leaders while he was president, according to two people close to the investigation, adding another significant legal challenge for Bolsonaro.
Federal police have accused Bolsonaro and 10 of his allies of trying to keep expensive gifts he received from foreign governments and sell them, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the case files, which are sealed. Police are seeking to bring money laundering and criminal association charges against Bolsonaro and some of his allies, including former aides.
In one case, Bolsonaro and his team tried to hide $1 million worth of diamond jewelry that the former president received from the Saudi government, according to documents from previous investigations.
In another case, Bolsonaro’s team unsuccessfully tried to sell an 18-karat gold set from the Saudis for $50,000 at a Manhattan auction house during a Valentine’s Day sale last year, the documents show. In a third case, they sold two luxury watches at a Pennsylvania mall for $68,000 and gave some of the money to Bolsonaro, the documents show.
Although Brazilian police refer to those recommended charges as a “formal indictment” in Portuguese, Bolsonaro has not been charged. The country’s top federal prosecutor must now decide whether to charge Bolsonaro and force him to stand trial. That prosecutor and Brazil’s Supreme Court said they had not yet received the police recommendations as of Thursday evening.
The case is part of a growing legal jeopardy for Brazil’s former president, just 18 months after leaving office.
In March, federal police recommended filing charges against Bolsonaro over a scheme to falsify his Covid-19 vaccination records, though federal prosecutors have yet to charge him.
In February, police confiscated his passport and ordered him to remain in Brazil while they investigated his role in what authorities say was a conspiracy to cling to power after losing the 2022 election. Days later, Bolsonaro spent two nights in the Hungarian embassy in Brazil’s capital in an apparent attempt to seek asylum, according to security camera footage obtained by The New York Times.
If convicted in either case, the former president could face a prison sentence. Legal experts say the coup plotting allegations are the most likely to lead to a prison sentence if convicted, while convictions in the jewelry or vaccination card cases could result in lighter sentences. Former presidents are not immune from prosecution in Brazil.
Bolsonaro has denied the allegations and called the investigations political persecution. He and his lawyer have argued that the gifts were legally his property. “All former presidents had problems” with foreign gifts, Bolsonaro told Brazilian newspaper Estadão last year. “The law is confusing.”
His lawyer declined to comment because he had not yet seen the documents recommending the charges.
Bolsonaro has long been compared to former President Donald J. Trump, and while both share combative political styles and a far-right stance, they also increasingly share similar legal challenges.
Trump, who has been convicted in one case and indicted in three others, has also been accused of misusing foreign gifts he received as president. House Democrats accused the Trump White House of failing to properly document more than 100 foreign gifts worth more than $250,000 in total. Nearly all of those gifts have now been accounted for.
In Brazil, the jewelry case began in 2021, when a Brazilian government official was caught returning from an official visit to Saudi Arabia with undeclared diamond jewelry worth about $1 million. The official told authorities that the items were a gift from Saudi officials to Bolsonaro and his wife, Michelle.
In June 2022, Bolsonaro’s personal assistant, Lt. Col. Mauro Cid, sold a diamond Rolex watch and a Patek Philippe watch to a jewelry store in the Willow Grove Park mall in Pennsylvania, according to investigative documents. Police believe one watch was a gift from Saudi Arabia and the other from Bahrain.
Police have recommended that charges be filed against Cid in that case. Cid had previously signed a plea agreement with authorities. His lawyer has said Cid was following orders from Bolsonaro, something Bolsonaro denies.
Brazilian law allows presidents to keep some gifts if they are personal, but they must not be of great value, according to Bruno Dantas, president of Brazil’s control court, the effective auditor of the federal government. “If it’s a diamond necklace with the president’s name on it, he can’t have it,” Dantas told The Times last year.
To decide what is the president’s property and what belongs to the state, a government-appointed panel sometimes steps in. That panel ruled that at least some of the jewelry Bolsonaro’s advisers were seeking to sell was of a personal nature.
Paulo Cunha Bueno, Bolsonaro’s lawyer, has said that means the jewels are legally Bolsonaro’s property. “He can sell them,” Cunha Bueno told the Times last year. “And if he dies, the assets go to his heirs.”
The head of the government-appointed panel was among those accused by police of conspiracy to commit crimes. The Brazilian Supreme Court judge overseeing the investigation had previously said some evidence suggested Bolsonaro had ordered the panel to rule that the jewels were his property.
Police have said other evidence shows Bolsonaro and his allies tried to conceal their scheme. They operated mostly in cash, for example. In one WhatsApp exchange, Cid told an associate that his father had $25,000 for the former president. “He would hand it to him,” he said. “The less movement in the account, the better, right?”
After Mr. Dantas of the control court ordered Mr. Bolsonaro to return the jewelry last year, Frederick Wassef, a former lawyer for Mr. Bolsonaro, flew to Pennsylvania and bought back the Saudi Rolex for $49,000, police said.
Wassef later denied this to the Brazilian press. “I have never seen that watch,” he told Brazilian news site G1 last year. “I dare you to try it.”
News sites then published the receipt with his name on it.
Police this week recommended that Wassef also be charged with money laundering and criminal association.
Wassef said this week that Bolsonaro did not ask him to buy the Rolex. He said he did so on his own during a trip to the United States to return it to the federal government, as courts had requested. “I am going through all this solely to practice law in defense of Jair Bolsonaro,” he said.
Paulo Motoryn He contributed reporting from Brasilia.
