Editor’s Note
Brazil’s judiciary has launched an investigation into former President Jair Bolsonaro over allegations he illegally imported valuable diamond jewelry gifted by Saudi Arabia. Ordered to return the pieces within five days, Bolsonaro faces potential legal and political repercussions as he prepares to return from the U.S.
Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is under investigation by his country’s judiciary on suspicion of illegally importing extremely valuable diamond jewelry gifted by Saudi Arabia. A court has given him five days to return the pieces in his possession. This case could become both a legal and political problem for the former president (2019-2022), who is expected to return to Brazil soon from the United States, where he has resided since Lula da Silva assumed the presidency on January 1.
Bolsonaro’s former Minister of Mines and Energy, Bento Albuquerque, who made an official visit to Saudi Arabia in October 2021, stated that a “envoy” from the Saudi government handed two packages to his delegation at the end of the trip, according to a revelation to the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo.
Upon returning to Brazil, customs inspectors at Guarulhos Airport in Sao Paulo detected that an assistant of Albuquerque was carrying one of the boxes inside his backpack, without declaring it. Officials discovered the package was full of diamond jewelry and seized it for failure to pay required import duties. According to surveillance video footage released by local TV, the former minister stated the jewelry was intended for First Lady Michelle Bolsonaro. In testimony to police investigators on Tuesday, Albuquerque tried to be less categorical: he said that since they were jewelry, he simply assumed they were for the former first lady, according to local media. Bolsonaro’s administration reportedly attempted at least eight times to convince customs inspectors to release the jewelry, with a final effort on the penultimate day of his term.
The second package evaded customs control and was delivered to Bolsonaro, who allegedly kept it, according to Albuquerque. Bolsonaro reacted in the early days of the scandal:
Both packages contained jewelry from the luxury Swiss brand Chopard. The first contained a necklace, a ring, a watch, and a pair of earrings, valued at $3.2 million. The second contained a watch, a ring, a pen, a pair of cufflinks, and a rosary, a set estimated at $75,000 according to Brazilian media.
Under Brazilian law, travelers entering the country with goods exceeding $1,000 must declare them. In this case, the owner should have paid import taxes on the jewelry, equivalent to half the value exceeding $1,000. The former presidential couple could have imported the jewelry duty-free if it had been declared as gifts to the state, but in that case, the items would have remained in the collection of the Planalto Presidential Palace. The Federal Police (PF) and the tax authority have opened separate investigations into the case. The head of the Senate’s transparency committee also announced an investigation to determine whether the jewelry is linked to the sale that same year of an oil refinery in northeastern Brazil to the sovereign investment fund of the United Arab Emirates, Mubadala, for $1.65 billion.
The first set of jewelry remains at Guarulhos International Airport. The federal tax authority says the deadline to regularize its legal status expired in July 2022, and the items could now be auctioned, donated, added to the national collection, or destroyed. Brazilian media reported Monday that Bolsonaro had agreed to hand over the second set of jewelry to authorities.
The Federal Court of Accounts (TCU), which oversees public finances, ordered Wednesday that Bolsonaro return the second set of jewelry within five days to the general secretariat of the presidency so that it can be integrated into the state collection.