MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Bolsonaro's son's properties raided by Brazilian police

Jair Renan Valle Bolsonaro is believed to be an accomplice and beneficiary of a money laundering scheme

Brazilian police Thursday raided two properties belonging to Jair Renan Valle Bolsonaro, the 25-year-old son of former President Jair Messias Bolsonaro, in Camboriú, (Santa Catarina) and Brasília, for his alleged involvement in a money laundering and embezzlement scheme.

 The operation comes at a time when the former head of state, who has been disenfranchised for eight years by the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), is hospitalized in São Paulo for a series of tests.

Shooting instructor Maciel Carvalho, a close acquaintance of Bolsonaro's son and a former official, was arrested in January for the illicit sale of weapons. Authorities claim Carvalho laundered funds from arms sales and evaded taxes, and to do so, he used a network of shell companies and accounts opened in the name of one Antônio Amâncio Alves Mandarrari. In this context, Jair Renan Valle Bolsonaro is believed to be an accomplice and beneficiary of this illegal system.

Admar Gonzaga, Valle Bolsonaro's lawyer, said that a “search warrant was served at the residence” of his client in Balneario Camboriú, in the state of Santa Catarina (south), in which a cell phone, a hard drive, and notebooks with notes were confiscated.

“Renan was not taken to make a statement nor was there any other measure” against him, the lawyer added. He also underlined his client's “surprise” at the police raid.

A total of one arrest warrant and five search warrants were served by law enforcement on Thursday in the capital Brasilia and in Balneario Camboriú while a second arrest warrant could not be served because the suspect was on the run, according to Federal District Civil Police Chief Commissioner Leonardo Cardoso of the Department for Combating Corruption and Organized Crime (Decor).

The DF Police issued a statement assuring that the investigation “points to the existence of a criminal association to obtain an undue economic advantage with the insertion of a front man to hide the real owner of phantom companies.”

The searches are part of a police operation aimed at “repressing the practice” of alleged “crimes against public faith and illicit association, in addition to crimes committed to the detriment of the treasury,” the Brasilia Civil Police also said in a note.

In December 2021, the Federal Police (PF) summoned Jair Renan Boolsonaro to testify in an investigation for allegedly paying bribes to businessmen to do business with the public administration but the case was shelved last year in the absence of evidence.