Bolsonaro back in Brazil: what legal consequences await the former president?

Jair Bolsonaro cultivated doubts about a possible return to the country. Finally, after a three-month exile in the US, the former Brazilian president announced that he would return on Thursday. A long delay due to the legal risks associated with his return: the far-right ex-head of state is under five investigations in the Supreme Court in cases that could lead to imprisonment.

What are these polls?

Four investigations concern alleged crimes committed during his term, between 2019 and 2022. The fifth concerns suspicions of inciting his supporters to participate in the January 8 riots in Brasilia.

One of the investigations was launched in 2020 when his former Attorney General accused him of interfering with the federal police to protect relatives suspected of corruption. Jair Bolsonaro is also under investigation for disinformation about electronic ballot boxes or about Covid.

With presidential immunity, he could only be judged by the Supreme Court. Cases can now be tried by the courts of first instance, where procedures tend to be shorter.

In the “highly unlikely” case that Jair Bolsonaro is sentenced to the maximum terms for all the offenses attributed to him, he could spend almost 40 years behind bars, said Carla Junqueira, a lawyer and doctor of international law from the University of São Paulo.

Can he be jailed?

The former head of state himself recently acknowledged that this risk was real. “An arrest warrant could be issued without warning,” he told the Wall Street Journal in February. Preventive detention is also possible if the judge believes that the suspect risks compromising the investigation, for example by destroying evidence.

However, it is unlikely that Jair Bolsonaro will be finally condemned by all instances (there are four in Brazil) in the short term. All appeals can take years to process. In Brazil, a convicted person can only be imprisoned after all his appeals have been exhausted, unless he poses a danger to society.

Can he be declared incompetent?

Jair Bolsonaro is also under investigation 16 by the Supreme Electoral Court. He could be sentenced to eight years in ban, which will prevent him from running for president in 2026. The ex-president is particularly implicated in his repeated verbal attacks on the electronic ballot box system.

The complaints also denounce the use of the state apparatus for electoral purposes. His government, for example, forced Congress to approve an increase in the social minimum months before elections last October, in which he eventually lost to leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

But the most cutting-edge investigation, which experts say poses a real threat to his political future, concerns a meeting with ambassadors last July in Brasilia.

Faced with diplomats from about forty countries, Jair Bolsonaro showed a PowerPoint presentation full of false information about electronic ballot boxes, which led him to be suspected of abuse of power.

Saudi jewelry

The pressure on the far-right ex-president is also exerted by another scandal that made headlines in the Brazilian press: he is accused of smuggling jewelry donated by Saudi Arabia to Brazil.

Brazilian customs seized a €3 million set of diamonds meant for his wife Michelle Bolsonaro. These jewels were in the bag of an assistant government minister who was returning on an official visit to Riyadh in October 2021. They were not declared in advance.

Another batch of men’s jewelry came into the possession of Jair Bolsonaro, who returned them last week through his lawyers at the request of the Accounts Chamber. On Tuesday, the Estadao newspaper reported on the existence of a third batch of diamond-encrusted Rolex watches that the former president received on a trip to Saudi Arabia in 2019 and would have kept.

Under Brazilian law, when it comes to gifts received from third countries, the head of state can only keep gifts of a very personal nature or of minimal value. In the absence of these two criteria, they must remain in the presidium’s collection. Thus, for the current Minister of Justice, Flavio Dino Bolsonaro, could be prosecuted for misappropriation of public property or tax evasion.