Brazil’s Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE) may soon impose a ban on former President Jair Bolsonaro from running for office, national media outlets reported this week, for allegedly having spread disinformation about the nation’s electoral system during an official encounter with diplomats in July.
The speculation over potential action by the TSE is ongoing alongside legal proceedings in a case against the former president over allegations of improper handling of jewels gifted to Brazil by the government of Saudi Arabia.
The former case’s rapporteur, TSE minister (judge) Benedito Gonçalves, informed Bolsonaro and his defense team on Friday that they had two working days to submit their closing arguments, as the TSE had concluded the instruction phase of the case.
Gonçalves is expected to release the case against Bolsonaro to be judged by Brazil’s Superior Electoral Tribunal on April 10. If a majority of the top court’s judges rule against Bolsonaro at the end of the trial, the former president may be banned from running for public office for a period of eight years, barring him from the 2026 presidential race.
“The rich body of evidence gathered in the records, which was formed with extensive participation of the parties and the [Electoral Public Ministry], exhausts the purposes of the instruction,” Gonçalves said. “Which is why it is necessary to close the present procedural stage.”
Bolsonaro stands accused of having allegedly spread misinformation about Brazil’s electoral ballot boxes and having questioned the nation’s electoral system during an official meeting with foreign ambassadors in July 2022, in the middle of the 2022 presidential election campaign.
Videos of the meeting between Bolsonaro and the ambassadors were removed from Facebook, Instagram, and Google in August after the TSE ordered their immediate deletion. The TSE fined Bolsonaro 20,000 Brazilian reais (roughly $3,966) for having asserted to the group of diplomats that Brazil’s electoral system was “completely vulnerable” without presenting evidence to sustain his claims.
The Electoral Court’s legal proceedings against the former president were carried out after Brazil’s Democratic Labour Party (PDT) filed a lawsuit against Bolsonaro in August demanding the former president be banned from running for office over his statements given at the meeting with ambassadors in July.
TSE’s actions are ongoing as Bolsonaro faces a second probe. The Brazilian Federal Police are investigating a set of jewelry that Bolsonaro claimed in an interview with CNN Brasil shortly before his return to the country was given to him and his wife Michelle Bolsonaro by the government of Saudi Arabia as gifts.
Bolsonaro, who returned to Brazil last week after spending three months in the United States, gave his deposition regarding the jewelry at the headquarters of the Brazilian Federal Police in Brasília on Wednesday afternoon. The Federal Police are conducting an investigation to determine if Bolsonaro committed a crime by attempting to keep the luxury jewelry in his possession.
The jewelry, estimated to have a value of 16.5 million Brazilian reais (roughly $3.27 million), was brought over to Brazil by former Energy and Mines Minister Bento Albuquerque in October 2021 after an official trip. Brazilian customs and tax authorities seized and retained the jewelry at the Guarulhos airport for failure to pay the required import duty fees.
Bolsonaro denied any irregularities pertaining to the jewelry during his interview with CNN Brasil, identifying them as gifts and insisting he had properly registered them with his government.
“If there was bad faith on the part of someone, they would not have been registered,” Bolsonaro told CNN. “Nothing was hidden. If the press divulges it, it is because there is a record saying that it was received.”
According to the Brazilian newspaper Estadao, Bolsonaro reportedly requested the release of the jewelry from the nation’s autonomous tax authorities on several opportunities, to no avail.
“It was sought, documentally, with letters,” Bolsonaro told CNN. “We sought to recover this material for the collection, by letter, no one wanted to seek it in the big hand [Brazilian slang term for thievery].”
Bolsonaro handed over another set of jewelry and firearms received from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates through his lawyers on March 24. The items are reportedly being stored at the Caixa Economica Federal state-owned bank at the request of a Brazilian court, which also ordered an audit of all of the gifts received by Bolsonaro during his presidency.
Brazilian law states that travelers entering or returning to Brazil with goods worth more than $1,000 are obligated to declare them at customs and pay hefty import taxes equivalent to 50 percent of the value of each item — failure to do so incurs in a fine amounting to 25 percent of the value of each undeclared item.
“I make it very clear; in 2021, a minister of ours went to the region [sic] of Saudi Arabia and got two gifts, one for me, one for the first lady,” Bolsonaro expressed to CNN. “The one for me, I learned at the end of last year that it had arrived. The first lady stayed at customs. She found out, and so did I, through the press.”
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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