(Bloomberg) — Brazilian prosecutors asked a court to seize the assets of former President Jair Bolsonaro as their investigation of the violent, anti-government riots that shook the country Sunday expands beyond the demonstrators themselves.
(Bloomberg) — Brazilian prosecutors asked a court to seize the assets of former President Jair Bolsonaro as their investigation of the violent, anti-government riots that shook the country Sunday expands beyond the demonstrators themselves.
Officials said the money should be used to help pay for the damage to public property when protesters stormed government buildings in Brasilia on Jan. 8. Separately, investigators have also identified more than 100 companies suspected of having financed the rioters and will call for their assets to be blocked, CNN Brasil reported, without saying where it got the information.
Officials are broadening their investigation into Brazil’s worst political violence in decades after arresting more than 1,500 rioters, with a focus on tracking down who paid to ferry the Bolsonaro supporters to Brasilia and who funded protest camps in front of military headquarters.
Authorities are also looking into possible ties between the protesters and some members of Brazil’s massive agricultural sector — a key financial backer of Bolsonaro — but Justice Minister Flavio Dino said it’s too early to say who bankrolled the riots.
Prosecutors “won’t stop at the people arrested on site,” Dino told GloboNews on Tuesday. “We will escalate this investigation as much as possible, to the upper echelons that directed the terrorism in Brazil.”
Latin America’s largest economy is reeling from the aftermath of the efforts by backers of Bolsonaro to restore him to power, which included trashing government offices, breaking windows and destroying artwork. Much like the rioters who broke into the US Capitol in 2021 in support of Donald Trump, the former president’s allies are convinced voter fraud kept him from winning re-election in the October vote he lost to Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
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Some of the biggest financial supporters of Bolsonaro’s 2022 campaign disavowed Sunday’s violence, including agribusiness magnate Hugo de Carvalho Ribeiro, attorney and preacher Fabiano Zettel and Luciano Hang, the billionaire owner of department store chain Havan.
Bolsonaro, a populist former army captain who stunned political analysts when he won the presidency in 2018, relied on a network of individual donors, both big-ticketed and small, to try to hold on to his job last year. A majority of his campaign’s financial support came from the powerful agriculture sector. Brazil is the world’s biggest exporter of soybeans, beef, coffee and sugar, and the industry accounts for about 25% of gross domestic product.
After narrowly losing to Lula, Bolsonaro retreated to the presidential palace and then holed in Florida as his successor took over. But opponents say his comments in interviews and tweets encouraged thinking among some of his backers that they could overturn his electoral defeat, ultimately leading to the riots.
Bolsonaro himself condemned the protests on Sunday. After being admitted to a hospital near Orlando with abdominal pain on Monday, he told CNN Brasil he expects to cut his US trip short and head back to Brazil.
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Zettel, a partner at a Sao Paulo-based law firm focused on the finance sector and the biggest single donor to Bolsonaro’s 2022 campaign, sought to distance himself from the riots.
“The ballot results must be honored, democracy defended by us all,” he said in an emailed response to questions from Bloomberg News.
Hang also criticized Jan. 8’s violence.
“I never backed or would back acts of violence and vandalism,” he said in an emailed response to questions. “I didn’t donate to, participate in or foster any anti-democratic act, nor act against public property. I repudiate everything that was done on Sunday.”
Ribeiro, a member of the sprawling Maggi family, one of the biggest landowners in Brazil, was the third-biggest donor to Bolsonaro’s presidential campaign last year. He said that rioters should be “identified and punished,” in an emailed statement. Ribeiro is a shareholder at Amaggi, a commodities conglomerate that had over $7.3 billion in revenue in 2021.
Farmers in Brazil, much like those in the US, tend to tilt conservative and align with Bolsonaro’s avowed religious faith and family values. They also appreciated his willingness to champion their priorities over environmental concerns, especially in the Amazon.
Brazilian farmers have pushed back on the idea they had any responsibility for the riots in Brasilia. Remarks that suggest otherwise “are inappropriate and don’t reflect the real importance of agribusiness for the country,” a group of soybean producers in Mato Grosso state said Monday.
For now, as authorities try to find those responsible for funding the riots, they’re also still trying to track down the people who actually broke into the government buildings.
As in the US after Jan. 6, 2021, Brazilian authorities are pouring over selfies and social media posts to identify and arrest more participants. The Justice Ministry has set up an email address where people can rat out protesters, and has already received over 30,000 tips.
–With assistance from Bruna Lessa and Rachel Gamarski.
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