The Federal Ministry of Public Affairs (Prosecution) requested this Monday the Court of Auditors of the Union (TCU), a supervisory body affiliated to Congress, that former President Jair Bolsonaro return all the gifts received during his term in office.
Prosecutor Lucas Rocha Furtado’s request comes amid the scandal in which Bolsonaro, his wife Michelle and six close friends had to testify before federal police about an alleged attempt to embezzle jewelry.
The jewelry was given to Bolsonaro in Arab countries when he was still in power, and now prosecutors are demanding that all gifts received by foreign authorities on official trips abroad be returned by the former president.
Prosecutors have compiled press clippings showing Bolsonaro receiving gifts such as watches, gold-plated sculptures, a samurai helmet, a painting of Solomon’s Temple in Israel and a marble model of the Taj Mahal, among other gifts.
For the public prosecutor’s office, as the state news service Agencia Brasil reports, these donations must be considered state assets because they were received during Bolsonaro’s term of office (2019-2022).
The latest controversial case concerns a series of valuable jewelry and items that the far-right leader received on official trips to Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries and which he was supposed to hand over to the state treasury after leaving office.
According to investigations, Bolsonaro sold some of these jewelry through intermediaries, but some of his associates bought them back when the state demanded their return.
According to the judiciary, the matter could be an attempt to misuse public property, a hypothesis that Bolsonaro has strongly denied in previous statements on the case.
In addition to Bolsonaro and his wife, who remained silent during police interrogation, former presidential aide Lieutenant Colonel Mauro Cid and former government communications chief Fabio Wajngarten were also summoned.
Also the lawyer Frederick Wassef, General Mauro Lorena Cid, father of the former aide, and two Bolsonaro advisers: Marcelo Camara and Osmar Crivellati.
According to speculation, they may all have been involved in the sale of some of these jewels, which the lawyer Wassef bought back after the state demanded their return last January, when the progressive Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took power.
In the request made this Monday, the prosecutor pointed out that an opposition senator had reported a similar case of the current President Lula, which involved a luxury watch that he received from the former French President Jacques Chirac and which was used after his departure from power (2003-2010) was not returned.
Rocha Furtado noted in her statement that Lula could use this watch during his current term, his third term, but that he would have to return it when he was no longer in charge of the executive branch.