The Corruption Scheme Haunting Brazil's Bolsonaro
Newly leaked audio recordings have sparked a political firestorm in Brazil - linking President Jair Bolsonaro to an extortion scheme where political staffers had to give up part of their salaries in order to keep their jobs, a practice known as "rachadinha." InSight Crime looks back at how these allegations have grown over the years.
It began on December 6, 2018. It had been just 91 days since
Jair Bolsonaro, a polarizing veteran of Rio de Janeiro’s brutal political wars,
had been stabbed in the belly during a presidential campaign stop.
The stab wound was deep, reaching his liver, lung and
intestines. Despite not returning to the campaign trail, he won both rounds of
the presidential election.
By December, with polls showing he was admired and feared in
seemingly equal measure, Bolsonaro was preparing for his upcoming inauguration.
In a speech to Brazil’s Supreme Electoral Court (Tribunal Superior Eleitoral –
TSE), he solemnly declared that “the building of a fairer and more developed
nation requires a break with historical practices that have delayed our
progress, no more corruption, no more violence, no more lies.”
But another wound was coming, not a physical one requiring
immediate hospital treatment, but a slow-acting wound that would regularly
return to sap energy from Bolsonaro, his family and his closest allies.
On December 6, 2018, Brazil’s Council for Financial
Activities Control (Conselho de Controle de Atividades Financeiras - Coaf)
released a damning report. It identified suspicious transactions worth 1.2
million reais (around $230,000) made by Fabrício José Carlos de Queiroz, the
former driver of Bolsonaro’s eldest son, Flávio.
Many of these transactions were for sums under $10,000 reais
(about $1,900), presumably as a way of trying to hide them. Another $24,000
reais (around $4,600) were paid to the account of the first lady in waiting,
Michelle Bolsonaro.
Perhaps to their credit, the Bolsonaro clan did not
immediately throw Queiroz under the bus. This man had been a long-term ally, a
chauffeur, an adviser, a friend invited to barbecues and football games.
On December 7, 2018, Jair Bolsonaro admitted to the
payments. In fact, he said Queiroz had paid his wife more than what Coaf had
stated. The repayments had been for a total of $40,000 reais, made in 10
installments of $4,000 each to settle a personal debt.
But the story didn’t go away. And a dirty word that has long
plagued Brazilian politics entered the conversation.
What is Rachadinha?
Rachadinha. The word is tricky. Foreign correspondents
weren’t even sure how to translate it. It derives from rachar, to split or to
crack.
It refers to a scheme somewhere between extortion and
bribery, which can be carried out in a number of ways. One common tactic sees
lower-ranked government officials or political staffers forced to split their
public salary, keeping one part for themselves and giving another to their
superiors in order to keep their jobs. Another way is to simply create fake
political jobs, with those appointed to these positions never doing any work.
Their salary is then again divided between themselves and higher-ups.
And it is seemingly omnipresent in Rio. The first Coaf
report was not focused on Queiroz alone, it named around 20 other political
staff in the Rio de Janeiro legislature at the time as being involved with
rachadinha.
The Queiroz scheme appeared to be of the first variety. The
amounts involved quickly increased. By mid-December 2018, an investigation by
Brazil’s Attorney General’s Office found that Queiroz had been involved in up
to $2.9 million in suspicious transactions, with small amounts deposited and withdrawn
in cash. At least 483 deposits were linked to political staff or advisors
linked to Flávio Bolsonaro, then a state senator in Rio de Janeiro.
Prosecutors stated that Flávio was receiving money in
seemingly legal transactions after the funds were laundered through a chocolate
shop he owned in western Rio.
The amounts directly linked to the presidential couple also
continued to increase. In 2020, news magazine Crusoé reported that Michelle
Bolsonaro had been receiving payments from Queiroz since 2011, reaching 89,000
reais (about $17,000). Queiroz was even paying school fees for Flávio’s
daughters.
And the money allegedly paid to the entire Bolsonaro family
was also adding up: 450,000 reais (some $86,000).
But still, the family of the president managed to dodge
trouble. For a while, at least.
In August 2020, Queiroz was arrested at the home of
Frederick Wassef, the attorney of Flávio Bolsonaro. But not for any charges
connected to rachadinha. Instead, one of the most-watched men in Brazil had
allegedly been continuing to commit crimes, working to slow down the
investigation, in part by pressuring witnesses.
The mood in the Bolsonaro camp shifted.
Flávio went on the attack. The allegations against Queiroz
were “another piece moved on the checkerboard to attack Bolsonaro,” he wrote on
Twitter.
President Bolsonaro was also pugnacious. At a press
conference a week after Queiroz’s arrest, a reporter from O Globo asked:
“President, why did your wife Michelle receive 89,000 reais from Fabrício
Queiroz?”
“I feel like covering your mouth in punches,” the president
replied.
The case continued to evolve.
Bolsonaro Clan Under Investigation
By early 2021, Flávio Bolsonaro was under investigation for
the rachadinha case, suspected of having helped to create 12 fake jobs in his
office as state senator, leading to the embezzlement of 6.1 million reais (more
than $1 million).
In a breathtaking act of political showmanship, Flávio sold
the chocolate shop suspected of laundering the rachadinha money and bought a
luxury mansion in the capital, Brasilia. The price of the mansion: 6 million
reais.
The rachadinha case remained a wound in the side of the
president, distracting him, putting his children and his wife in legal
jeopardy, requiring his increasingly strident attention.
That is until July 5, 2021. In a three-part investigation,
Brazilian news site, UOL published audio messages from President Bolsonaro’s
former sister-in-law, which seem to indicate the president was an active part
of a rachadinha scheme while he was a state deputy in Rio from 1991 to
2018. In these messages, Andrea
Siqueira Valle can be heard describing how the president kicked out her
brother, André, from a rachadinha scheme for not paying in enough money.
“André caused a lot of problems because he never returned
the right amount of money that had to be returned, you understand? He had to
pay in 6,000 reais but he paid in 2,000, 3,000 reais. It was a while like that
until Jair caught him and said: enough. You can remove him because he never
gives me the right money,” said Siqueira Valle.
This marks the first time President Bolsonaro has been
directly linked to any rachadinha scheme.
The Bolsonaro family lawyer, the same one who was hiding
Queiroz before his arrest, immediately denied the allegations. But the probe is
picking up steam.
Senior parliamentarians want to call Siqueira Valle to
testify in front of the Brazilian Senate. Hundreds of thousands of protesters
have descended to the streets.
Yet, Bolsonaro may yet cling to power. His presidential
impunity would have to be stripped for him to face an impeachment trial.
Despite the president’s falling popularity, his political allies have not
abandoned him and are likely to block any motion to impeach or strip him of
immunity.
But should the rachadinha case be shelved until he leaves
office in 2022, it would likely become one of a number of cases haunting the
embattled president.
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