Prosecutors Investigate Flávio Bolsonaro’s Store in Connection with Salary Kickbacks

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Senator Flávio Bolsonaro’s chocolates store, President Jair Bolsonaro’s firstborn, was the target of a search and seizure warrant on Wednesday as part of an operation by Rio de Janeiro’s Prosecutor’s Office that searched the addresses of family, friends and former advisors to the ex-state deputy.

The store’s accounting office was also searched. The prosecutors did not request searches of Flávio’s residence. In total, the operation complied with 24 search and seizure warrants issued by the 27th Criminal Court of Rio de Janeiro.

Flávio’s store is a franchise of the Kopenhagen chain located in the Via Parque shopping mall, in Barra da Tijuca, west zone of Rio de Janeiro. Prosecutors cross-referenced and collected bank records to determine whether the store had been used to conceal the illicit origin of funds diverted from the salaries of employees of the Legislative Assembly, in a salary kickback scheme known as a “splitting”, during the period when Flávio was state deputy.

Prosecutors found from bank data that the store collected higher amounts of cash deposits during periods outside Easter, a holiday that accounts for the majority of the chain’s chocolate sales. As a result, they are to investigate the store’s accounting, receipts and invoices to determine whether the amounts deposited in cash originated, in fact, from the sale of chocolates.

Flávio Bolsonaro has always denied any irregularity in this case. Flávio’s attorney, Frederick Wassef, said he has not yet had access to the full precautionary measure, which should only occur today. He said that nothing is worrying the defense and that the search and seizure at Flávio’s store was “uncalled for”.

“Absolutely nothing worries us. Whatever they find in the addresses will show that my client has nothing to do with what is being investigated in ALERJ. On the other hand, the search and seizure of his company is uncalled for. They broke down the door. It would be enough to wait for the employees to arrive and the door would be opened and the decision would be fulfilled,” he told El Pais.

“Since January 2018 until today, they have investigated and ravaged my client’s life. I will repeat what I have been saying for a year. My client’s banking confidentiality was breached. Even so, nothing was found. There was never a [salary] split”, he added.

Addresses of former advisor Fabrício Queiroz, a friend of the Bolsonaro family for decades, and his relatives were also the targets of searches on Wednesday. He is being investigated on suspicion that he was the operator responsible for receiving and managing part of the kicked back salaries of other advisors and straw men.

While receiving deposits from other employees, Queiroz withdrew R$661,000 between January 2016 and June 2018, in operations deemed suspicious of money laundering by the Financial Activities Control Board (COAF), now named the Financial Intelligence Unit ( UIF).

The body also found that Queiroz handled R$1.2 million in 2016 alone, in withdrawals and deposits, suspected of money laundering. And that, in June and July 2017, the then state deputy Flávio Bolsonaro received 48 deposits of R$ 2,000 each.

The investigation into Flávio’s activities in the Legislative Assembly of Rio de Janeiro was reopened two weeks after the Federal Supreme Court ruled that it is lawful to use financial reports produced by the UIF and the Federal Treasury in investigations, without the need for judicial authorization to produce these reports.

Until the decision, a preliminary injunction by Presiding Justice Dias Toffoli had halted all such investigations in the country since July, until such time as a plenary decision had been reached.