Rio de Janeiro Mayor Marcelo Crivella, an ally of Brazil’s far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, has been arrested and charged with corruption.
Four loads of police and prosecutors arrived at the mayor’s house in the rich Barra da Tijuca neighborhood before 6 o’clock in the morning.
Prosecutors later filed corruption charges against Crivella and 25 others, saying in a statement that the interceptions, confiscations, statements of witnesses and collaborating witnesses revealed “a well-structured and complex criminal organization led by Crivella that had acted in the mayor’s office.” from 2017 ”.
The arrest comes days before Crivella’s term ends and just weeks after the deeply unpopular mayor – a gospel singer who called homosexuality “a terrible evil” and avoided carnival – was beaten in the mayoral election by one of the his predecessors, Eduardo Paes.
Crivella is an evangelical bishop and former senator who served as fisheries minister in the Dilma Rousseff government. He is the grandson of Edir Macedo, who founded the powerful evangelical church of the Universal Church of God. Mauro Macedo, Edir Macedo’s cousin and former treasurer of Crivella’s campaign, was also charged and arrested.
“This is political persecution,” Crivella told reporters on arrival at police headquarters. “The government has fought corruption the hardest.” He hopes for justice, he said. Police also arrested businessman Rafael Alves, the mayor’s “trusted man”, who had an office in the mayor’s office but did not have an official role, said the G1 website – Marcelo, Alves’ brother, was the head of tourism in Rio. Former police officer and city councilor Fernando Moraes was also arrested, G1 said.
Prosecutors have begun investigating a “business counter” that allegedly operated inside the mayor’s office in 2019, O Globo reported in December 2019, after money changer Sérgio Mizrahy signed a negotiation agreement. He claimed that the bribe was paid to strengthen the town hall contracts and to receive the outstanding debts paid.
In court documents authorizing the arrests, Judge Rosa Guita said prosecutors described Crivella as “the head of a criminal organization in which the other defendants participated, located in the Rio de Janeiro city hall in order to obtain illicit gains in ways.” varied ”.
Prosecutors said Alves operated schemes Crivella knew about, authorized and benefited from, Guita wrote. “The crimes were committed permanently during the four-year term, with fraudulent contracts and bribes received in the most varied sectors of the administration,” she wrote.
Crivella’s last months of administration have been tumultuous. In September, an investigation by TV Globo found that city hall employees known as “Crivella’s guards” were being paid to stay out of hospitals and stop citizens from complaining about medical care. Crivella said there was no basis for the charges.
But for long-suffering Rio residents, the news that another politician had been arrested was no surprise. Former Rio governor Sérgio Cabral is serving a prison sentence for corruption. His successor Luiz Fernando Souza – known as “Bigfoot” – was released from prison a year ago. Rio’s last governor, Wilson Witzel, was suspended in August for the alleged Covid-19 transplant. He denied the allegations. “Like other governors, I’m probably used politically,” he said at the time.
Crivella’s arrest comes as a blow to Bolsonaro, whose family home is in Rio. Bolsonaro won the 2018 elections on an anti-corruption platform and supported Crivella’s re-election attempt in a video the two men recorded together. The two men they danced together on stage at an evangelical Christian event in Rio last February.