Scandal in Brazil: find evidence of money laundering around Bolsonaro's son

The Rio de Janeiro prosecutor's office found signs of money laundering from Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, son of President Jair Bolsonaro, who had bought 19 properties between 2010 and 2017 as part of a investigation into the recruitment of "gnocchi" suspected of being members of the presidential family circle.

This is revealed by a document released today on Senator Bolsonaro's tax secrecy petition, which is currently the subject of an investigation into suspicious movements of funds by his former employees in the US. Legislative Assembly of Rio, especially Fabricio Queiroz, his former driver and president. friend of the president.

A check from Queiroz to Michelle Bolsonaro, the first lady, is part of the movement suspected of using the salaries of employees "gnocchi" for personal purposes.

Criminal Justice Flavio Nicolau of Rio de Janeiro has authorized the lifting of Senator Flavio Bolsonaro's banking secrecy.

This is because the prosecutor's office, according to documents published today by the local press, has as its tip the iceberg 19 buildings acquired between 2010 and 2017 by the president's son for about $ 3 million.

"There are signs of under-invoicing in the purchases and over-invoicing of sales and constant use of cash in payments for these properties," said one of them on Copacabana Beach, at the request of the Public Prosecutor's Office.

The profit from this transaction would have been $ 1 million.

The president's son denies the charges and denounces the disclosure of the details of the investigation as part of a "political intent".

Bank secrecy was lifted on 95 other people and companies, including a Panama-based company.

The investigation also concerns former parliamentary employees of current President Bolsonaro, while he was a federal deputy.

Several employees of the current president were also employed by their children, according to the prosecutor's report, 87 pages.

The report investigates a "criminal organization characterized by a high degree of permanence and stability", about the driver and former policeman Queiroz.

This former manager of Flavio Bolsonaro in the Legislative Assembly of Rio, friend of the president since the eighties, is accused of collecting the salary of potential gnocchi employees.

In July 2017, the senator received 48 deposits of 2,000 real (about $ 580) from Queiroz, a former policeman linked to paramilitary militias in Rio de Janeiro, who was suspected of ordering the badbadination of councilor and socialist leader Marielle Franco. in March 2018.

On Tuesday of this week, the son of the Brazilian president's senator indicated that his father had hidden interests in the judicial order to lift the confidentiality of their accounts in connection with an investigation into allegedly illegal transactions in the US. benefit of the family of paramilitary "militiamen". .

"They are trying to carry out a maneuver to reheat illegal information that they had held for months," added the statement of the senator who took office last February, according to the Ansa news agency. .