According to the O Estado de S. Paulo newspaper, the box includes a white gold Rolex watch encrusted with diamonds.
Former President Jair Bolsonaro received and kept a third package of jewelry gifted by the Saudi Arabian monarchy, which would have a value of about $90,000, the newspaper O Estado de S.Paulo revealed on Monday, three days before his expected I return to Brazil.
The box would include a white gold Rolex watch encrusted with diamonds and it would have been received personally by Bolsonaro when he traveled to Qatar and Saudi Arabia, in October 2019. It also includes a silver pen with encrusted stones, a pair of cufflinks and a white gold ring with diamonds.
Back in Brazil, according to the newspaper on Monday night, Bolsonaro ordered that they be added to his private collectionwhich violates the law.
This new information aggravates the scandal unleashed weeks ago, when the Brazilian press revealed that in 2021 a delegation from the Ministry of Mines and Energy entered Brazil, without declaring, two packages of jewels, a gift from Saudi Arabia for Bolsonaro and his wife Michelle.
One of the two packages was seized at customs when trying to be entered illegally at the Sao Paulo airport. The other did come into the hands of the former president.
The case could be framed in a crime of corruption. If the items are entered as personal belongings and their value exceeds $1,000, they must be declared and pay import taxes, something the Bolsonaro government did not do. He also did not try to regulate or incorporate the jewels that were seized into the Union’s patrimony.
Last week, by order of the Court of Accounts of the Union (TCU), Bolsonaro handed over to the Federal Police (PF) the box with jewelry, worth almost 200,000 dollarswhich came into his hands without declaring.
The other, the one that was seized in Sao Paulo and is valued at more than 3 million dollars, remains in the dependencies of the Ministry of Finance.
“We never thought of taking a hit”
The ex-president has been in the US since the end of December, where he traveled, according to his critics, to avoid putting the presidential sash on Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, on January 1 in Brasilia.
However, as announced by his own entourage, Bolsonaro plans to return to Brazil this Thursday, where a complicated political and judicial landscape awaits him.
The Federal Supreme Court (STF) is investigating him for allegedly “inciting” thousands of his radical supporters unhappy with Lula’s return to power to invade and destroy the presidential Planalto Palace, Congress and the STF in early January.
On Monday, in an interview with the Jovem Pan network from the US, he said that he “never” considered carrying out a coup.
“If I wanted to hit, I would have given it while I was presidentbut it never crossed our minds,” he said.
It also has fifteen investigations open in electoral justice, among them, for spreading false news about the electronic voting system.
For all this, he could be disqualified from the next elections or even be arrested, according to analysts.
Source: RT
