The senator (-RJ) celebrated the decision of the ) as terrorists, but he and other members of the family maintained relationships with those accused of participating in the , especially those in the .
a, the USA announced the new definition for the and the CV — a measure that the PL presidential candidate celebrates as an electoral asset.
“The Bolsonaro family and Flávio Bolsonaro do not condone factions or armed and criminal groups. Unlike the government []who received the first lady of drug trafficking at the Ministry of Justice and lobbied in the United States in favor of narco-terrorist factions”, stated the PL pre-candidate’s advisor for the Presidency.
The note refers to the departure of Luciane Farias, wife of a man appointed as leader of the Comando Vermelho do Amazonas, in 2023. The ministry admitted that Luciane, who received the nickname “drug lady”, was received at meetings, but stated that she did not know who she was. President Lula, however, did not meet with Farias.
Flávio’s office said that “there is not a single police report or process that corroborates the report’s thesis.” He also accused the Lula government of maintaining “close relations with a member of the PCC who was recently arrested and who may be leading a plan to attempt an attack on Flávio’s life” — the note does not explain what the statement refers to or cite any evidence.
Remember some of the actions and demonstrations of the Bolsonaro family linked to militias and organized crime.
Tribute to Adriano da Nóbrega
The former military police officer, appointed by the Public Ministry as a member of the Rio das Pedras militia and the extermination group Office of Crime, received, in 2005, a visit to the Flávio e (PL) prison.
The politicians presented Nóbrega with the Tiradentes Medal, an honor granted by Alerj (Legislative Assembly of the State of Rio de Janeiro) to personalities who provided relevant services to society. The tribute took place at the request of Flávio, then state deputy.
In 2003, the politician had already paid tribute to Nóbrega, which would have taken place at his father’s request, according to Jair, who told the press in 2020.
Nóbrega was, in 2020, after being on the run for more than a year. He was accused of a series of homicides in Rio de Janeiro and involvement with slot machines, banned in Brazil.
Employment for relatives of militia members and ‘rachadinha’
In addition to the honor, Flávio guaranteed employment at Alerj, until 2018, for Raimunda Veras Magalhães and Danielle Mendonça da Costa da Nóbrega, Adriano da Nóbrega’s mother and wife respectively.
They had a salary of more than R$6,000 in the deputy’s office and, according to the Public Ministry of Rio de Janeiro, they were involved in a “in which part of the advisors’ salary was returned to the politician. The parliamentarian always denied the accusations.
According to investigators, Danielle passed on at least R$150,000 to Fabrício Queiroz, a retired military police officer who was Flávio’s advisor. Of this volume, R$115 thousand would have been transferred through bank accounts controlled by Adriano da Nóbrega. Accounts were also used in the name of two restaurants owned by the former police officer and Raimunda’s family, in a period prior to her appointment in Flávio’s cabinet.
The investigations into the “crack” were closed after the (Supreme Federal Court) and the (Superior Court of Justice) annulled the evidence collected in 2021.
Flávio always rejected the accusations, which were intended to destroy his reputation. “[Houve] all this foam, all this attack to try to destroy my reputation, and no criminal proceedings were ever initiated against me. Do you know how many financial connections you have with my advisors? Zero. Do you know how many advisors said I charged back a salary to employ them in my office? Zero”, he told the Intelligence Ltda podcast in March this year.
Exaltation of militias and criminal organizations
Jair and Flávio Bolsonaro supported police officers suspected of violent behavior and spoke in favor of militias, criminal organizations made up mainly of former security agents.
Jair defended these groups, establishing a relationship between their presence and security. “In that region where the militia is paid, there is none,” he stated.
Flávio has also minimized the seriousness of the militias, saying that “it is not uncommon to see” the happiness of residents of communities dominated by militias. In a speech at Alerj in 2007, he called the militias a “new form of policing, in quotation marks”.
Jair, in addition, was arrested for being part of a criminal organization that tried to carry out a coup d’état. During his term as president, from 2019 to 2022, he also did not move to classify groups like the PCC as terrorists.
Security guards accused of participating in gang
In August 2018, Operation Fourth Element arrested police officers suspected of participating in a gang specializing in extortion. Among those arrested were two military police officers who, that year, had participated in security for Flávio’s campaign for the Senate. They are brothers of Valdenice de Oliveira Meliga, who was an advisor to the leadership of the PSL (Bolsonaro’s former party) in Alerj and the party’s treasurer in the state.
At the time, the elected senator denied to the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo that the police were part of his campaign, while Valdenice said that the brothers acted as volunteers. In a photo published on his social network in October 2017, Flávio appears with Valdenice and the twins. In the caption, he wrote: “Congratulations Alan and Alex on your anniversary, this family is great!!!”.
The former president of Alerj Rodrigo Bacellar (União Brasil) strengthened ties with the Bolsonaro family from 2024, aiming to succeed Cláudio Castro (PL) in the Government of Rio de Janeiro. In July of that year, Bacellar met with Jair, Flávio and Carlos to discuss the municipal ones and won a clan medal with the words “immortal, imbroxable and inedible”.
After becoming potential, he lost his mandate and was arrested on suspicion of participating in a criminal organization and leaking information to benefit the .
Audio released by the website The Intercept Brasil revealed that senator Flávio Bolsonaro was in contact with , accused of a series of crimes involving fraud, such as criminal organization, corruption and money laundering.
The website revealed that Vorcaro agreed to pay R$134 million for the film “Dark Horse” (underdog, in English), about former president Jair Bolsonaro. Afterwards, Flávio stated that the owner of Master paid around R$60 million for the feature film and acknowledged having charged the remaining installments, under the justification of involving only private, and not public, resources. The senator also admitted to having personally met with Vorcaro to, according to him, “put an end” to the relationship.
Master’s fraud generated losses of at least R$41 billion to the national financial system, also affecting BRB (Banco de Brasília).
