Nearly 30,000 dollars in a modest restaurant, more than 14,500 dollars in a bakery the day following his son’s wedding: the lifting of the secrecy on the expenses of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has brought to light incredible costs.
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Account statements for the presidential credit card over his four years in office (2019-2022) have been published on an official online site of the leftist government of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, his successor, who has begun raising a secrecy imposed for 100 years by his far-right predecessor on thousands of official documents.
A total of 27.6 million reais (more than $7 million at the current exchange rate) was spent with this card, used by 21 people on his team.
If we take into account the amounts corrected for inflation, this expenditure is almost half that of Lula’s first term (2003-2006). But in the case of the latter, they mainly concerned accommodation costs for trips abroad.
This is not the case of Jair Bolsonaro, who also boasted several times during his term of not having spent “a single penny” with the presidential credit card, unlike his predecessors.
The Uol information website, for example, noted that 1.2 million reais (regarding 315,000 dollars) had been spent during the 28 days of the official end-of-year vacation of the former head of the State in 2019, 2020 and 2021.
A payment of more than 71,000 reais (more than 18,000 dollars) was for example made on January 2, 2022 at a gas station in the state of Santa Catarina (south), where Mr. Bolsonaro had caused an outcry by making jet-skiing while terrible floods affected several regions of his country.
The presidential credit card was also used to pay 1.46 million reais (more than 380,000 dollars) in four years in a luxury hotel in Guaruja, a seaside resort near Sao Paulo (southeast). According to online site G1, this hotel housed members of his team while he was staying at a military compound.
30,000 dollars in a modest restaurant
The biggest expense in food is also the one that raises the most questions: 109,266 reais (nearly 30,000 dollars) spent in one go in a modest restaurant in Boa Vista, in the Amazonian state of Roraima (north). Enough to order more than 2,000 times the most expensive dish, roast chicken with cassava flour, at the modest price of 50 reais (13 dollars).
The presidential credit card was also used to pay more than 362,000 reais ($95,000) in four years at a bakery in Rio de Janeiro, including 55,000 in one go the day following his son Eduardo’s wedding and 33,000 the day before. of a motorcycle procession organized by its sympathizers in the streets of this city.
A total of 8,600 reais (more than $2,200) was spent at ice cream parlors, representing 62 purchases in five establishments.
