$2,000 for ice cream? Former Brazil President Bolsonaro’s credit card bill raises eyebrows

Mr Bolsonaro frequently claimed not to have charged “a single penny” to the card. PHOTO: AFP

BRASILIA - More than US$21,000 (S$27,000) splurged at a modest restaurant; US$10,700 spent at a bakery in a single day. The public release on Friday of ex-president Jair Bolsonaro’s official credit card expenditures is raising eyebrows in Brazil.

More than 27.6 million real (S$7 million at today’s exchange rate) was charged to the far-right president’s card during his four-year term, according to account statements published on Friday on a government website.

Unlike his predecessors, Mr Bolsonaro threw a 100-year secrecy veil over presidential credit card expenditures, among other official information, which successor Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has begun lifting.

Mr Bolsonaro and 21 members of his team had access to the card.

Adjusted for inflation, the full amount charged to the card is almost half that spent during Mr Lula’s first four-year term beginning in 2003 – though he used the card mainly for accommodation while travelling abroad.

Mr Bolsonaro frequently claimed not to have charged “a single penny” to the card.

But analysis of the newly-opened records by the Uol news website found that today’s equivalent of more than US$235,000 was spent by Mr Bolsonaro while on vacation in 2019, 2020 and 2021.

Nearly US$14,000 was spent on a single visit to a petrol station, and another US$286,000 on several visits to a luxury hotel in Guaruja, a seaside resort near Sao Paulo.

According to the website G1, the hotel housed members of Mr Bolsonaro’s entourage, while he stayed at a military complex.

Jair Bolsonaro’s wife, Michelle, leaves their rental house in Kissimmee, Florida, on Jan 11, 2023. PHOTO: AFP

Food expenses were among the most astonishing billed items.

On one visit to a restaurant in Boa Vista in the Amazonian state of Roraima, the presidential card was used to pay a bill of more than US$21,000.

Supporters of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, pray for his health outside his rental home, in Kissimmee, Florida, on Jan 12, 2023. PHOTO: AFP

That would be enough for an order of 2,000 plates of the restaurant’s most expensive dish: roast chicken with a side starch, which costs a little less than US$10.

The card was also used to charge more than US$71,000 over four years at a bakery in Rio de Janeiro.

Of this amount, almost US$11,000 was spent in one go: on the day after the wedding of Mr Bolsonaro’s son. It also happened to be the eve of a motorbike rally organised by Mr Bolsonaro’s supporters through the streets of Rio.

A total of more than US$1,600 (S$2,000) was spent at ice cream shops.

Separately, Brazil’s Supreme Court agreed on Friday to open an investigation into Mr Bolsonaro for allegedly encouraging anti-democratic protests that ended in the storming of government buildings by his supporters in Brasilia.

“Public figures who continue to cowardly conspire against democracy trying to establish a state of exception will be held accountable,” said Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who agreed to the request by federal prosecutors to launch the probe.

Mr Bolsonaro, who is currently in the United States, will be investigated by prosecutors for possible “instigation and intellectual authorship of the anti-democratic acts that resulted in vandalism and violence in Brasilia last Sunday”, the top public prosecutor’s office said in a statement. AFP, REUTERS

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