The former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro tried to bring jewelry gifted by Saudi Arabia into Brazil for a value of 16.5 million reais (almost 3 million euros) without having previously declared them and without paying the corresponding taxes. The Brazilian press reported it in the last hours.
The former president received a large amount of jewelry from the Saudi authorities in October 2021, including “a necklace, a ring, a watch and a pair of diamond earrings”all gifts for who was at that time the first lady, Michelle Bolsonaro.
Upon returning to Brazil, customs agents found the jewelry in the backpack of one of the soldiers who traveled with the presidential entourage. and they verified that none of the objects had previously been declared as legal trademark.
The goods were seized at the Guarulhos international airport, in São Paulo, according to information from the newspaper The State of São Paulo which was later confirmed by other media. The former Minister of Mines and Energy, Bento Albuquerque, tried to recover the jewels without success on numerous occasions..
The Brazilian newspaper affirms that, in the last two months of Bolsonaro’s term, four attempts were made to retrieve the gifts even mobilizing the Foreign and Economy ministries, all without success.
The only way to recover the jewels would be by paying the mandatory import tax, 50 percent of the value of the good in question, and a fine of 25 percent of the value for not having declared from the beginningreported the news agency Europe Press.
The other option would be to declare them as “Official gift to the President of the Republic and the First Lady”but local media explain that in this way they would belong to the State of Brazil, not to the Bolsonaros.
The current minister of the Presidency’s Communication Secretariat, Paulo Pimenta, spoke harshly on the issue on his Twitter account: “The report (from The State of São Paulo) reveals gruesome details about how the bribery, gift and illegal advantage scheme of Bolsonaro, his family and close advisers worked. Everyone deserves to be investigated and punished for the crimes committed.”.
Likewise, he described the attempts of the former minister Albuquerque to recover the jewels as something “shameful and that shows the lack of ethics of those who held positions in the Government”.
