Brazil’s President Bolsonaro/ AFP
A Brazilian supreme court judge has halted an investigation into suspicious transactions handled by an aide to a politician son of President Jair Bolsonaro, officials said Thursday.
The injunction, issued Wednesday, was confirmed by Rio de Janeiro state authorities overseeing the probe into the “atypical financial movements†in accounts in the name of Fabricio Queiroz, a police officer who serves as driver and bodyguard for Bolsonaro’s eldest son Flavio Bolsonaro.
The reason for the injunction, issued under conditions of secrecy by Justice Luiz Fux, was not made public.
Jair Bolsonaro took office on January 1 after easily winning October 2018 elections by promising a stern crackdown on corruption.
A government financial monitoring agency detected suspect transactions totaling 1.2 million reais ($300,000), the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper reported in early December.
The movements occurred between January 2016 and January 2017 and flagged attention because they were not compatible with Quieroz’s police salary.
One of the transactions was a deposit of 24,000 reais made to an account in the name of Jair Bolsonaro’s wife.
Flavio Bolsonaro was a lawmaker in Rio de Janeiro’s state legislature at the time. In October he won a seat in the federal senate, which starts sitting in February.
Brazilian media said the judge issued his order following a request from Flavio Bolsonaro.
Quieroz has been summoned several times to testify as to the source of the transactions but has failed to do so, asserting health problems.
The Rio de Janeiro state prosecutors’ office said on Monday that it could move forward with a case against him regardless, if sufficient evidence existed.
In a television interview late December, Quieroz denied acting as a front for the Bolsonaros and said the money came from side businesses he ran, “buying cars, selling cars.â€
The president has tried to downplay the affair, saying that if any “mistake†was made it would be “paid.†He said the payment from Quieroz’s account to his wife’s was partial repayment of an undeclared loan he had made to his son’s driver.
Jair Bolsonaro, an avid Twitter user, made no immediate comment on the injunction or the circumstances surrounding it.
Source:
www.channelstv.com/2019/01/17/brazil-judge-suspends-probe-into-aide-to-presidents-son/
