Brazil’s new government has released the personal spending accounts of the former president Jair Bolsonaro, revealing the far-right leader’s apparent penchant for expensive hotels, big meals out – and ice-cream.
Bolsonaro, who lost his re-election bid in October, once boasted he did not withdraw “a single penny” from the corporate credit cards given to him and his closest advisers.
Although he slapped a 100-year ban on publishing his spending records, the new government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Thursday revealed the records of the last four presidencies dating back to 2003.
The spending was broken down by date, amount, name of where the money was spent, and the category of the company being paid. The vast majority of spending was on hotels and food.
Nine of the 10 biggest outlays made during Bolsonaro’s presidency were at a hotel in Guarujá, where the former army captain liked to spend weekends off. The corporate cards were also used in a pet shop, pharmacies, restaurants and dozens of trips to ice-cream parlours. (Around £1,300 was spent on ice cream.)
The list is dotted with oddities, with O Globo reporting Bolsonaro and his team spent a fortune on one single day buying 659 takeaway meals and 2,964 sandwiches at a restaurant in Roraima state.
More than 12,000 reais (almost £2,000) was spent in one sitting at a steak restaurant; 25,000 reais was put on the tab at a hamburger restaurant in the northern state of Ceará; and more than 50,000 reais was handed over at a Rio de Janeiro bakery the day before Bolsonaro took part in a motorcycle rally there, according to breakdowns in the Brazilian media.
The corporate cards are supposed to be used for travel expenses and small or urgent purchases, but money was also spent on hunting and fishing, sports equipment, sheets and bedding, and bottled gas.
Although Bolsonaro’s spending has come under scrutiny, his total outlay of 32 million reais, when adjusted for inflation, is less than Lula’s in both his first two terms between 2003 and 2011, and less than his successor Dilma Rousseff.
The Publica agency said one possible reason for the discrepancy was that some of Bolsonaro’s spending remained hidden behind secrecy rules and had not yet been published.
