Huge expenses not only for bread and ice cream: The disclosure of payments by former Brazilian head of state Jair Bolsonaro with the official presidential credit card raised questions today. The president’s credit card statements during his four-year term were published on an official website of the government of his successor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
The disclosures are among a series of thousands of documents on which Bolsonaro has imposed a hundred-year secrecy that his successor has declared obsolete. As a result, a total of 27.6 million reais (about five million euros) were spent on the credit card, which Bolsonaro and 21 members of his team had access to.
For example, around €217,000 was spent during Bolsonaro’s official Christmas holidays in 2019, 2020 and 2021. A payment of nearly €13,000 was made on January 2, 2022 at a gas station in the south of the state of Santa Catarina , where Bolsonaro caused an uproar riding a jet ski while floods ravaged several regions of Brazil.
20,000 euros for restaurant
The biggest expense with food is also the one that raises the most questions: around €20,000 spent all at once in a modest restaurant in Boa Vista, in Roraima, in the north of Amazonas. That’s enough to order more than 2,000 servings of the most expensive item on the menu, fried chicken with cassava flour, priced at nine euros.
The president’s credit card was also used to pay a total of 65,000 euros at a bakery in Rio de Janeiro over four years, nearly 10,000 euros of which coincided with his son Eduardo’s wedding. A total of around €1,500 was spent on ice cream parlors – with 62 purchases across five establishments.
Bolsonaro boasted several times during his tenure that, unlike his predecessors, “he hadn’t spent a dime” on the president’s credit card.