Brazil’s Bolsonaro implicated in alleged graft scheme as lawmaker, UOL reports
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Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was involved in a scheme to skim salaries of his aides while a federal deputy, website UOL reported on Monday, citing what it said were audios of his former sister-in-law explaining his role in the alleged racket.
The scheme, known locally as rachadinha, involves hiring close associates as employees and then receiving a cut of their public salaries back from them.
Rio de Janeiro state prosecutors have formally pressed charges against federal Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, the president’s eldest son, over his alleged participation in a similar racket when he was a state lawmaker.
The UOL story, based on audio recordings of Bolsonaro’s former sister-in-law, Andrea Siqueira Valle, provided by a source, is the first time the president has been directly implicated in a rachadinha scheme, despite numerous awkward questions about his role in Flavio Bolsonaro’s alleged racket in Rio.
This comes as Bolsonaro is seeing his anti-graft credentials, which helped get him elected president in 2018, questioned by a simmering scandal over alleged corruption in the government’s vaccine procurement efforts.
