Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said Thursday (September 1) that the press was trying to
"reach him 30 days from the election"
with new suspicions of corruption against his family, which he brushed aside.
On Tuesday, the Uol news site published a report showing that members of the Bolsonaro family had acquired 51 properties paid for entirely or partially in cash from 1990 to 2022, for a total amount of almost 4.8 million euros. .
“Why are they doing this against my family? Half of this property belongs to my ex-brother-in-law? What do I have to do with him? We haven't seen each other for ages
,” said the head of state during an interview with the Jovem Pan channel, whose editorial line is favorable to him.
"They are looking for a way to reach me 30 days from the election, but they are not going to get there
," added the far-right president, who will run for a second term on October 2.
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Uol said Thursday that only eight of 51 properties cited in the report belonged to the brother-in-law in question.
Cash payments for large sums are not a crime in themselves, but often raise suspicions as to the legality of their origin.
Randolfe Rodrigues, senator member of the campaign team of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, favorite in the polls for the presidential election, filed a request with the Supreme Court to open an investigation based on the revelations of the Uol site.
Jair Bolsonaro was elected in 2018 under the promise of zero tolerance against corruption and had surfed on the rejection of a left with an image tarnished by the scandal which affected the public oil company Petrobras.
Last May, a Rio de Janeiro court dismissed a case involving the president's eldest son, Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, accused of embezzlement of public funds when he was a regional deputy.
The investigation focused on the alleged use of a hijacking scheme called "rachadinha", a term for the existence of ghost employees paid by the Rio legislature, who allegedly donated part of their salary to their employer.