Former President Jair Bolsonaro this Friday returned through his lawyers a package of jewelry given to him by Saudi Arabia following the scandal caused by the alleged illegal entry, along with another package of jewelry withheld by Brazil’s tax authorities.
The jewels were delivered by Bolsonaro’s lawyers to a public bank in Brasília, following an instruction ordered last week by the Federal Court of Auditors (TCU), the Brazilian state’s oversight body.
The returned package from the Swiss luxury brand Chopard had a value of about $ 75,000 (69,700 euros) and contained, among other things, a watch, pen, cufflinks, ring and a kind of rosary.
The TCU’s decision was based on well-founded suspicions that these jewels entered the country illegally without proper declaration to the tax authorities and the Treasury and that they also belonged to the national public heritage and would not be in Bolsonaro’s possession.
In addition, the delivery of these men’s jewelry – two cufflinks, a watch, a ring, a fountain pen and a rosary, all in gold – is done because the TCU already understood that heads of state in Brazil cannot keep gifts of high value.
Another “jewelry package” allegedly gifted by the government of Saudi Arabia to the wife of the former president, Michelle Bolsonaro, was intercepted by Brazil’s federal tax authorities in the luggage of a soldier returning from a trip with the former minister of Mines and Energy, Bento Albuquerque. The entourage tried to transport these jewels to Brazil in 2021 without submitting a declaration to the tax authorities.
The expensive gift for Bolsonaro’s wife, also from the exclusive Swiss brand and including a necklace, ring, watch and diamond earrings, is estimated at around 3 million euros.
In its decision, the TCU also ordered the former ruler to hand over a machine gun and a pistol he received from the United Arab Emirates in 2019 and all the gifts he received during the four years of his reign (2019-2022) , to have it checked.
Unlike the jewels, the two weapons were registered with the Treasury and the Army. According to the Brazilian ‘media’, the weapons have already been handed over to the appropriate authorities.
Initially, the TCU gave Jair Bolsonaro five days to leave all these gifts at the headquarters of the General Secretariat of the Presidency, but the deadline was extended so that they could eventually be delivered to the Caixa Económica Federal or the Federal Police, in Brasília, details of the newspaper O Globo.
Source: DN
