SAO PAULO — Brazilian presidential candidate Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro is under investigation for corruption, money laundering and tax evasion for receiving millions of dollars from a disgraced banker to finance a movie about his father, former President Jair Bolsonaro.
Brazil’s top court unsealed several documents late Thursday that show Sen. Bolsonaro, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s primary opponent, is under investigation for receiving 61 million reais ($12 million) from a banker at the center of a corruption scandal to produce an unreleased movie titled “The Dark Horse.”
The investigation, which centers on whether the Bolsonaro family misused the funds and whether the payments were properly reported to Brazilian authorities, threatens to undermine Sen. Bolsonaro’s bid for the presidency. The first round of elections is slated for Oct. 4, and the senator is locked in a tight race with Lula.
The banker, Daniel Vorcaro, who was arrested in March, is accused of defrauding many of Banco Master’s 800,000 clients, including several state government pension funds, out of hundreds of millions of dollars by convincing them to make questionable investments. The scandal has engulfed several high-ranking officials in Brazil.
The allegations first became public in May. Sen. Bolsonaro has denied any wrongdoing and said Friday during a campaign event in the Amazonian city of Manaus that he was seeking private investment for the movie.
“It is very positive that the documents are unsealed,” Flávio Bolsonaro told journalists at the event. “I want transparency in everything. I will only confirm what I always said. There’s nothing wrong about the movie.”
Corruption, money laundering and tax evasion
One document alleges that Eduardo Bolsonaro, who lives in Texas and is one of Flavio Bolsonaro’s brothers, “guided how the resources (sent by Vorcaro) could be managed in the United States.”
Prosecutors suspect the funds for the film were used to pay Eduardo Bolsonaro’s expenses and to promote Flavio Bolsonaro’s political agenda to the Trump administration, documents show.
Eduardo Bolsonaro denied any wrongdoing in his social media channels and said investigators “are trying to repeat the mechanism that worked against Jair Bolsonaro.” The former president was sentenced by Brazil’s Supreme Court to 27 years in prison after a coup attempt.
On Thursday, Brazil’s federal police seized documents from the film’s production company and from lawmaker Mário Frias, who sent about 2 million reais ($400,000) to a non-profit linked to the film. The production company and Frias deny any wrongdoing.
Supreme Court Justice André Mendonca, a Bolsonaro appointee, opened the investigation into Sen. Bolsonaro in July at the request of Brazil’s federal police.
Mendonca’s office has been silent about the case for many weeks, which led Lula’s allies to accuse the Supreme Court justice of shielding Sen. Bolsonaro from investigations.
Mendonca unsealed the documents at the request of Chief Justice Luiz Edson Fachin, who sought to ease a political crisis within the court and bring transparency into the sprawling Banco Master probe. Fachin on Friday ordered Mendonca to release all documents regarding the Banco Master case within 24 hours.
Paulo Henrique Paschoeto Cassimiro, a political science professor at Rio de Janeiro State University, said Sen. Bolsonaro’s links with Vorcaro could hurt his chances against Lula three weeks before the vote, after he spent months recovering in the polls since the revelations surfaced in May.
Cassimiro added that the unsealed documents could also boost Lula’s standing since he has insisted for all of them to be aired publicly, no matter who they hit, as he knows “much of the scandal has hit politicians on the right, although not exclusively.”
Lula has brought the case to his campaign in ads and recent interviews.
“Banco Master was created in the Bolsonaro administration. Vorcaro was arrested in mine, the bank was shuttered in mine,” Lula said in an interview with broadcaster SBT aired Thursday evening.
Brazil’s Central Bank shut down Banco Master, whose assets topped $16 billion, in November.
