The mayor of Rio de Janeiro is arrested for corruption …

The mayor of Rio de Janeiro, the evangelist pastor Marcelo Crivella, one of President Jair Bolsonaro’s closest allies, was arrested and sacked on Tuesday, nine days after the end of his mandate, accused of having participated in a bribe network has its origins in fraudulent public contracts.

“No one has done more than me against corruption in Rio de Janeiro,” Crivella told media as he arrived at police headquarters, where he also denounced the political persecution. The mayor He is the maximum leader in the executive functions of the Republican Party, the political force of the Universal Pentecostal Church, to which the two sons of the President are affiliated: Senator Flávio Bolsonaro and Rio de Janeiro councilor Carlos Bolsonaro.

Five other people were detained by the civilian police at the request of the public prosecutor’s office and on the order of the judge of second instance Rosa Macedo Guita in the so-called “Cuartel General de la Coima” case.

An illegal currency trader arrested in 2018 and a whistleblower said Crivella was part of a network led by businessman Rafael Alves, who even had an office where he served people with contracts with the Rio Municipality and who collected bribes for them. renew them.

Mauro Macedo, former treasurer of Crivella’s re-election campaign last November, was also arrested, in which he was beaten by Eduardo Paes, who will take office on January 1.

Another prisoner is former commissioner Fernando Moraes, famous for commanding the Rio police anti-kidnapping division.

The judge also determined the dismissal of Crivella, whom she designates as “head of a criminal organization (…) installed in the office of the mayor of Rio with the aim of obtaining illicit profits in the most varied manner” .

The prosecution said it suspected that this alleged network headed by a “top” would have laundered just over $ 1.2 million through churches of the Universal Church led by the mayor and pastor.

Crivella must wait for the decision to remain in jail, as the legal community debates the spectacular nature of his arrest – the media was waiting for the police – because there would be no grounds for preventive detention.

Even a political rival, Rodrigo Maia, president of the Chamber of Deputies, of the Democratic Party, attacked the arrest: “It is abusive. He has a fixed address and there is no risk of flight . “

The prosecution’s decision to base the charge on an award-winning whistleblower will be one of Crivella’s defense arguments to oppose the case in higher courts.

On the death of the deputy mayor in 2019, Jorge Felippe, head of the chamber of councilors, will assume the post of mayor, who will make the transition for the change of command on January 1 so that right-wing Democrats Eduardo Paes take his functions.

Universal Church

Crivella is an ally and former alumnus of Edir Macedo, the founding tycoon of the Universal Church, also owner of the country’s second-largest television network, Record, which has become a Bolsonarist channel since 2019.

The pastor, who became famous for being a gospel singer and having written a book in Angola against Africa-based religions, is considered Macedo’s political arm and became Bolsonaro’s main ally in Rio from 2018, when the Universal Church became openly official.

Crivella is known to be a political chameleon based on Brazilian neo-Pentecostal evangelical culture, to the point that he was for a few months Minister of Fisheries under the presidency of Dilma Rousseff, within the framework of the broad policy of parliamentary alliances of the Workers’ Party (PT).

River of corruption

Opposed to Carnival, which he threatened to withdraw funds for his organization, he won the 2016 elections with an anti-communist and anti-corruption message, as part of the speech of Operation Lava Jato, which, according to investigations, has become a hotbed of political conflict against the PT of the judiciary of the city of Curitiba.

This year, Crivella attempted re-election but was killed by more than 30 points, in what was the worst electoral defeat in the municipal elections for Bolsonaro, who lost in Rio, the city where he forged his political career there. has three decades.

Rio de Janeiro has been rocked since 2014 by a wave of corruption allegations. On August 29, Governor Wilson Witzel, a former ally of Bolsonaro, was suspended from his post for fraudulent contracts for mobile hospitals against the pandemic.

The last five former governors of Rio de Janeiro are jailed or have been detained for corruption, in scandalous processes.

The most serious case is that of Sergio Cabral, who admitted to stealing and embezzling money and is being held under Lava Jato.