Editor’s Note
**Editor’s Note:** Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro returned a $75,000 luxury jewelry set from Saudi Arabia on Friday, following a scandal over its alleged irregular entry into the country. The items were handed over by his lawyers at a Brasília public bank, per an order from Brazil’s Court of Accounts.
Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro returned a package of jewelry gifted by Saudi Arabia this Friday through his lawyers, following a scandal over their alleged irregular entry into the country.
The jewelry was handed over by the former president’s lawyers at a public bank in Brasília, after an instruction ordered last week by the Court of Accounts, Brazil’s state audit body.
The collection from the luxury Swiss brand Chopard, valued at approximately $75,000, includes a watch, a pen, cufflinks, a ring, and a type of rosary.
The court’s decision was based on well-founded suspicions that the jewelry entered the country irregularly and without proper declaration to the tax authorities, and that they should form part of the national public patrimony rather than remain in the possession of the retired Army captain.
Other jewelry, which the Saudi Arabian government gifted to Michelle de Paula Firmo, Bolsonaro’s wife, and which were intercepted by tax authorities when an aide to a minister of the far-right leader attempted to bring them into the country in 2021, will also have to be handed over to the public bank.
The costly gift for the former president’s wife, also from the exclusive Swiss brand and including a necklace, a ring, a watch, and diamond earrings, is valued at approximately $3.2 million.
In its decision, the audit body also ordered the former leader to hand over a rifle and a pistol he received from the United Arab Emirates in 2019, and mandated an audit of all gifts he received during his four-year government (2019-2022).
Unlike the jewelry, the two weapons were registered with the tax authorities and the Army, and according to lawyers, they are to be delivered to the Federal Police during the day.
The former Brazilian president has experienced the scandal from a distance, as since December 30 he has been in the United States in a sort of ‘self-exile’ which he intends to end this same March when he returns to Brazil, although the date has not yet been fully confirmed.
