Brazil’s federal police have recommended criminal charges against former President Jair Bolsonaro in a scheme to embezzle jewelry he received as gifts from foreign leaders while president, according to two people familiar with the investigation, adding another major legal challenge to Mr. Bolsonaro.
Federal police have accused Mr. Bolsonaro and 10 of his allies of trying to keep and sell expensive gifts he received from foreign governments, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe sealed case files. Police are seeking money laundering and criminal association charges against Mr Bolsonaro and some of his allies, including former aides.
In one case, Mr. Bolsonaro and his team tried to hide $1 million worth of diamond jewelry the former president received from the Saudi Arabian government, according to earlier investigative documents.
In another, Mr. Bolsonaro’s team tried and failed 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, they sold two luxury watches at a Pennsylvania mall for $68,000 and delivered some of the cash to Mr. Bolsonaro, the documents show.
While Brazilian police call such recommended charges a “category” in Portuguese, Mr. Bolsonaro has not been charged. The country’s top federal prosecutor must now decide whether to indict Mr Bolsonaro and force him to stand trial. That prosecutor and Brazil’s Supreme Court said they had not yet received the recommendations from police as of Thursday night.
The case is part of a growing legal risk for Brazil’s former president, just 18 months since he left office.
In March, federal police recommended charges against Mr Bolsonaro in a scheme to falsify his Covid-19 vaccination records, although federal prosecutors have yet to press charges.
In February, police confiscated his passport and ordered him to remain in Brazil as they investigated his role in what authorities say was a plot to stay in power after losing the 2022 election. Days later, Mr .Bolsonaro spent two nights at the Hungarian embassy in the Brazilian 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 prison time. Legal experts say the coup plot charges are the most likely to lead to jail time if convicted, while convictions in the jewelry or vaccine card cases could lead to lighter sentences. Former presidents are not immune from prosecution in Brazil.
Mr Bolsonaro has denied the charges and called the investigations a political prosecution. He and his lawyer argued that the gifts were legally his property. “All former presidents have had problems” with foreign gifts, Mr Bolsonaro told Brazil’s Estadão newspaper last year. “The law is confusing.”
His lawyer declined to comment because he had not yet seen the documents constituting the charges.
Mr Bolsonaro has long embraced comparisons to former President Donald J. Trump, and while the two men share combative political styles and far-right politics, they also share increasingly similar legal challenges.
Mr Trump, who has been convicted in one case and charged in three others, has also been accused of mishandling foreign gifts he received as president. House Democrats have accused the Trump White House of failing to properly record more than 100 foreign gifts totaling more than $250,000. Almost all of these gifts have now been recorded.
In Brazil, the jewelry case began in 2021 when a Brazilian government official was arrested returning from an official visit from Saudi Arabia with undeclared diamond jewelry worth about $1 million. The official told authorities the items were a gift from Saudi officials for Mr Bolsonaro and his wife, Michelle.
In June 2022, Mr. Bolsonaro’s personal aide, Lt. Col. Mauro Cid, sold a diamond Rolex watch and a Patek Philippe watch to a jewelry store at Willow Grove Park Mall in Pennsylvania, according to investigative documents. Police believe one watch was a gift from Saudi Arabia and the other a gift from Bahrain.
The police have recommended charges against Mr. Cid in this case. Mr. Cid had previously signed a resignation agreement with the authorities. His lawyer said Mr. Sid was following orders from Mr. Bolsonaro, which Mr. Bolsonaro denies.
Brazilian law allows presidents to keep certain gifts if they are of a personal nature, but they must not be of great value, according to Bruno Dandas, the head of Brazil’s surveillance court, the federal government’s effective watchdog. “If it’s a diamond necklace with the president’s name on it, he can’t have it,” Mr. Dandas told The Times last year.
To decide what is a president’s property and what belongs to the state, a government-appointed committee sometimes weighs. That commission ruled that at least some of the jewelry Mr. Bolsonaro’s aides sought to sell was personal in nature.
Paulo Cunha Bueno, Mr Bolsonaro’s lawyer, said this meant the jewelery was legally Mr Bolsonaro’s. “He can sell them,” Mr. Cunha Bueno told The Times last year. “And if he dies, the assets go to his heirs.”
The head of the government-appointed commission was among those charged by the police with criminal association. The Brazilian Supreme Court judge overseeing the investigation had previously said some evidence suggested Mr Bolsonaro ordered the panel to decide the jewelery was his property.
Police said other evidence showed that Mr Bolsonaro and his allies tried to cover up their plan. They operated mostly in cash, for example. In an exchange on WhatsApp, Mr. Sid told an associate that his father had $25,000 for the former president. “He would hand-deliver it,” he said. “The less traffic on the account, the better, right?”
After Mr. Dandas of the supervisory court ordered Mr. Bolsonaro to return the jewelry last year, Frederic Vassef, Mr. Bolsonaro’s former lawyer, flew to Pennsylvania and bought the Saudi Rolex for $49,000, police said.
Mr Wassef later denied this to the Brazilian press. “I’ve never seen this watch,” he told Brazilian news site G1 last year. “I dare you to prove it.”
News sites then published the receipt under his name.
Police this week recommended that Mr Wassef also be charged with money laundering and criminal association.
Mr. Wassef said this week that Mr. Bolsonaro did not ask him to buy the Rolex. He said he did so voluntarily while on a trip to the United States to return it to the federal government, as the courts had requested. “I am going through all of this solely for the sake of the defense of Jair Bolsonaro,” he said.
Paulo Motoryn contributed reporting from Brasilia.
