Half of the Bolsonaro Family’s Real Estate Assets Acquired in Cash
According to an asset verification process conducted by UOL, close to half of the real estate assets acquired by President Jair Bolsonaro and his closest relatives in the past three decades were secured with cash.
For four years I have been investigating details of the family's assets. Partly due to confidential data, some information came from the Rio de Janeiro authorities' own investigations. The first data, came from data from processes of the Rio prosecutor's office that verified illegalities in the purchases of real estate made by Senator Flávio, Bolsonaro's eldest son, with the use of cash, but that already indicated the presence of involvement of the other members of the Bolsonaro family.
After that, I started interviewing several people who began to mention that other people in the family also did this. On the issue of real estate, I have been doing this since 2019. First I compiled the real estate data of Jair, Carlos and Eduardo, as well as two of the president's ex-wives. Data was requested from public registries. Since then I have been compiling data. At the beginning of the year, I met with Thiago Herdy to finalize the investigation of these four years.
Over time, I was also gathering the investigation records of Flávio and Carlos and we deepened the investigation on the core of Bolsonaro's relatives in SP: the mother and five brothers. We renewed requests to search everyone's assets in registry offices and asked for deeds of purchase and sale of the properties of all the properties. Then we made some trips to see properties and interview people involved in the negotiations.
We did property searches and then asked for certificates of real onus with the history of each property and, finally, the deeds of purchase and sale where there is a description of the negotiations. Yes, all these documents are paid for. They are not free. We also seek out sellers and former owners for interviews, as well as notary public officials. We cross-checked this data with information from judicial processes where there was already an assessment of the origin of the money.
We checked whether there were properties in the name of companies owned by people from the family nucleus being researched and we even found one case. To do this, we researched companies and cross-checked the data. In the end, we arrived at 107 properties negotiated by the family and half with cash. Shortly after the report was published, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro requested censorship of the report in a court and got. The decision was later reversed by the Supreme Court due to the scandal that resulted from it.
From the 1990s to the present day, Bolsonaro, his siblings, and his children have been involved in the acquisition of 107 properties, 51 of them bought in part or in full with petty cash, according to statements made by the family members.
The property transactions that were registered at the real estate assessor’s office as paid in “national currency,” a standard term that applies to cash payments, totaled R$ 13.5 million. This number is equal to R$ 25.6 million in the present day, as adjusted for inflation by the Extended National Consumer Price Index (IPCA). It is impossible to determine how payments adding up to R$ 986,000 (or R$ 1.99 million as adjusted for inflation) were made on these 26 properties, since the figures are not cited in the purchase and sales agreements. There are bank transfers and checks totaling R$ 13.4 million (or R$17.9 as adjusted by IPCA) corresponding to 30 of the properties.
At least 25 of these real estate purchases led to investigations by the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Rio de Janeiro and the Federal District. Among these are purchases and sales made by the president’s inner circle, children, and ex-wives. Although not necessarily conducted with cash, these transactions were nonetheless subject to investigation—such as, for example, in the case of “rachadinhas” (an illegal extortion scheme wherein political staffers are forced to hand over a portion of their salaries to their employers). UOL reached out to President Jair Bolsonaro through the Office of Communications to ask about his family’s preference for cash transactions but received no response before this article’s publication.
This past Tuesday, Bolsonaro expressed irritation about this line of questioning. “Why is buying property in cash such a big problem? I don’t know what the piece says... What’s the issue?” Bolsonaro said after taking part in a Q&A session sponsored by the National Trade and Services Association. “What do their business dealings have to do with me?” he said of his friends and relatives in Vale do Ribeira, São Paulo.
“Fine, then. Look into me, for God’s sake. How many properties are there? More than a hundred... Who bought them? Me? My family? My sons have already been investigated. Ever since I became president four years ago, Flávio and Carlos have been put through the ringer. Eduardo too, though less... And my relatives in Vale do Ribeira. I have five siblings in Vale do Ribeira.”
In verifying the Bolsonaro family’s assets, UOL has looked at properties in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Brasilia owned by the president, his three eldest sons, his mother, five siblings, and two ex-wives. In the past seven months, UOL has consulted 1,105 pages in 270 documents requisitioned from real estate assessor’s and recorder’s offices in 16 municipalities, 14 of them in the state of São Paulo. UOL has also personally visited 12 cities to check the addresses and uses of the properties, on top of consulting judicial proceedings.
Even Bolsonaro’s mother, Olinda, who died this past January at the age of 94, acquire two properties in cash, in 2008 and 2009. Located in Miracatu, in the interior of São Paulo, these are the only two properties in her name. The properties purchased by the family comprise stores, land, and several houses. The Brazilian Senate is currently discussing a bill that would ban cash from being used in real estate transactions with the aim of counteracting money laundering and the misrepresentation of assets.
Expanding Assets
Since Bolsonaro’s foray into politics as a federal congressman in the early 1990s, his family’s assets have multiplied—in the hands of his children in Rio de Janeiro and Brasilia, and of his siblings in the interior of São Paulo, especially in cities across the Vale do Ribeira region, the poorest in the state. By 1999, the family had acquired 12 properties. Some of these have since been sold and new ones have been bought. By 2022, the family still owned 56 out of the 107 properties bought and sold in the previous decades.
By the late nineties, the family had spent R$ 567,500 on real estate (R$ 1.9 million as adjusted for inflation). The 56 properties still registered to the Bolsonaro family today cost a total of R$ 18.9 million (or $26.2 million as adjusted by IPCA). Flávio and Carlos Bolsonaro, as well as Jair Bolsonaro’s second wife, Ana Cristina Siqueira Valle, have been under investigation since 2018 for participating in illegal “rachadinhas,” a scheme in which advisors, many of them ghost employees, retrieve their salaries in cash and then return close to 90% the total amount.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office of Rio de Janeiro’s investigation into Flávio Bolsonaro found that the money was later laundered through real estate purchases. Some of the evidence obtained during the inquiry was recently declared inadmissible, although the investigation persists. Carlos had his financial privacy breached for similar reasons. Last year, a series of articles published by UOL revealed that four employees of then-federal deputy Jair Bolsonaro’s cabinet withdrew more than 72% of their salary in cash.
Months later, a UOL podcast called “The Secret Life of Jair” aired a recording in which Andrea Siqueira Valle, sister of Bolsonaro’s ex-wife Ana Cristina, states that Bolsonaro knew about the scheme and fired his then-brother-in-law André for not handing as much of his salary as they wanted. “André stirred a lot of trouble because he didn’t turn in as much money as he was expected to, you know? He was supposed to turn in R$ 6,000 but instead turned in R$ 2,000 or R$ 3,000. It went on like that for a while until Jair said: ‘That’s enough. Get rid of him. He never hands over what he’s supposed to,’” Andrea said in the recording.
The São Paulo family branch
Maria Denise Bolsonaro, the president’s wealthiest sister, lives in São Paulo. She and her husband José Orestes Fonseca built a furniture, home-appliance, and novelty store empire in the Vale do Ribeira region. The two were married in 1980 in a community property regime. Although they are now separated, Maria Denise and José Orestes are still fighting over the division of assets. By law, the assets have to remain with the couple until the dispute ends.
The dispute covers nearly a dozen stores, a summer house in Cananéia, on the south coast of São Paulo, complete with a speedboat and jet ski, and two mansions located on a piece of land that spans more than 20,000 m2 in the center of Cajati, in the Vale do Ribeira region, all purchased in cash. The couples’ properties share a unique trait: The façade tiles, and sometimes the roof tiles, are blue, the trademark color of Campos Mais, the retail chain they once managed together.
Founded in 1971, the business began as a partnership with Orestes Bolsonaro Campos, son of Maria Denise and José Orestes—and still a child at the time—and Theodoro Konesuk, husband of Vânia Bolsonaro, another of the president’s sisters. In the early 2000s, following a disagreement between José Orestes and Theodoro, the partnership was dissolved. The two couples still do not speak to this day. Theodor and Vânia founded their own retail chain in the same field called Art’s Móveis.
While the Campos Mais stores are characterized by the colors blue and white, Art’s Móveis’ stores are red and white. Orestes and Maria Denise have a mix of real estate assets, some registered to them as private individuals, and others in the name of the company.
In the name of the mother
In 2008, the president’s mother, Olinda Bonturi Bolsonaro, a retired schoolteacher and widow, was 81. She lived with her daughters in different cities in the interior of São Paulo, including Eldorado, where Jair Bolsonaro spent some time as a young man. The daughters shared the responsibility and cost of caring for Olinda, who would soon be diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.
But in January 2008, Olinda signed a real estate agreement that was outside her routine: the purchase of a piece of 451-m² commercial property on a main avenue in the city of Miracatu for a sum of R$ 35,000 (the equivalent of R$82,700 today, according to IPCA).
In May of the following year, she registered the purchase of the adjoining 461-m² lot for R$ 80,000 (R$ 174,600 today). Both purchases were made in cash, not as investments but to house a furniture and novelty store founded by her son Renato Bolsonaro, the president’s brother, and carried on by one of Olinda’s grandchildren, Renato’s daughter, Vitória Leite Bolsonaro. To this day, the address serves as the headquarters of Vivi Móveis, the business Renato named after his daughter and which has since expanded to two more cities in the region. In 2011, at the age of 84, Olinda officially signed away both properties.
She got nothing in return, instead donating the properties to another grandchild, Vitória’s brother Luiz Paulo Leite Bolsonaro. Luiz Paulo is currently a military police officer in Goiás. When asked why her grandmother was involved in the purchase of that property, Vitória referred UOL to her lawyer: “The properties were acquired by the President’s mother, who has since passed away and can therefore no longer shed light on the transaction. I can assure you they were acquired legally,” said lawyer Silvia Brunatti.
She chose not to go into details about the circumstances that led to the purchase of those two properties, claiming it was “a personal, family matter.” “The donation was legal, honest, and fair, within the rights accorded to all civilians of sound body and mind,” she affirmed.
The man who sold the family the building told a different story. “I’d already sold the property when Renato found out and tracked me down. I don’t know whose name they registered it in, but I sold the place to Renato,” said the former owner, Onisvaldo da Costa Ribeiro, aged 76.
Bento Ribeiro
Renato had already taken part in a real estate cash transaction in 2006, one that directly involved President Jair Bolsonaro.
Bolsonaro bought the building where his political office is located in Rio de Janeiro, a house in the Bento Ribeiro neighborhood, from his brother Renato for R$ 40,000 in cash. This building is one of five properties that Bolsonaro has bought in cash in the course of his political career. UOL reached out to Renato, who refused to comment on the issue. In 2016, a news report by SBT Brasil noted that Renato, who was named as a special advisor in the Legislative Assembly of the State of São Paulo, did not show up for work. Soon after this information was released, he was removed from his position.
Money laundering prevention
The Brazilian Senate is discussing a bill that would ban cash from being used in real estate transactions. The goal is to counteract money laundering operations and the misrepresentation of assets. The bill was approved last year by the Committee on Economic Affairs, but it has taken almost 12 months for a rapporteur in the Constitution, Justice, and Citizenship Committee to be assigned to the case.
Since February 2020, real estate assessors have had to report any “unusual transactions” in cash or below the threshold of Real Estate Conveyance Tax to the Financial Activities Control Council (COAF).
The properties under review by UOL were acquired prior to this policy change—the family’s last cash real estate purchase occurred in 2018. The decision to have real estate assessors report to the COAF was made by the National Justice Council’s review board in the hope of putting in place another tool to counteract money laundering.
At least 25 of the Bolsonaro family’s properties have been the targets of investigation
At least 25 properties acquired by members of the Bolsonaro family since 2003 have been investigated by the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Rio de Janeiro and the Federal District. Among these properties are the President’s house in the Vivendas de Barra condominium in Rio de Janeiro, and the mansion purchased by Flávio Bolsonaro (PL-RJ) in Brasilia. According to the asset verification process UOL has been conducting for the last seven months, the cost of these properties adds up to a total R$ 13.9 million (R$ 22.6 million as adjusted by IPCA from the date of purchase).
Among the properties that are now or have been under investigation are two pieces of real estate bought in Resende, in the interior of Rio de Janeiro, by Jair Bolsonaro and his second wife, lawyer Ana Cristina Valle. According to records from the real estate assessor’s office, these purchases were made in 2006 for R$ 160,000, at a time when the properties were valued at R$ 743,000, or five times the amount paid. In 2011, when Ana Cristina Valle sold the property after separating from Bolsonaro, she received R$ 1.9 million, of which she deposited R$ 532,200 in cash. The banks reported the transaction to the Financial Activities Control Council. UOL reached out to Ana Cristina for a statement, but her defense team said she would only speak at the proceedings.
The house in the Vivendas da Barra condominium in Barra da Tijuca where Bolsonaro lived before taking presidential office was also a target of suspicion. The house was acquired in 2009 for R$ 409,000 and yet was valued at the time at R$ 1 million. Another particularity about this sale is that the former proprietor sold the house to Bolsonaro for 31% less than what she had paid for it four months earlier. Details about this case were published by Folha de São Paulo in 2018 and were subject to a preliminary inquiry by the Attorney General’s Office before being subsequently archived.
Property of Flávio Bolsonaro
Among the list of suspicious real estate purchases are 17 properties acquired by Senator Flávio Bolsonaro (PL-RJ). The Public Prosecutor’s Office of Rio de Janeiro has been investigating them in connection with money laundering of illegal “rachadinhas” in the cabinet of the then-state representative. Senator Bolsonaro has always denied any irregularities. Four further apartments were also purchased or sold in cash. Of the cases investigated, the most high-profile was the 2013 acquisition of two studio apartments in Copacabana.
According to documentation obtained from the real estate assessor’s office, Flávio Bolsonaro declared having paid for the two properties with checks amounting to R$ 320,000. Meanwhile, the Attorney General found that the seller deposited a further R$ 638,000 on top of the two checks he had already received for the studios’ purchase.
A mansion Flávio acquired is also undergoing asset verification with the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the Federal District. This R$ 5.97-million- purchase took place in early 2021. An article in Folha de São Paulo related that, compared to the bank’s usual practices, the financing conditions Flávio received were advantageous.
Recently, the Senator’s defense team stated that Flávio paid for the mansion with money from his work as a “lawyer, businessman, and entrepreneur.” Last year, Flávio transferred his law license from Rio de Janeiro to the Federal District. Yet, despite having a law degree, he has never practiced law, nor run his own law firm. Two apartments belonging to Carlos Bolsonaro (Republicanos-RJ) are also under investigation by the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Rio de Janeiro, which suspect money laundering in connection to “rachadinhas.” According to documents obtained from the real estate assessor’s office, “02” declared having paid R$ 150,000 in cash for an apartment in Tijuca in 2003.
Some years later, in 2009, he purchased an apartment in Copacabana for R$ 70,000. The Attorney General noted to the Court of Justice of Rio de Janeiro that “the apartment’s commercial value, for the purposes of property tax, was closer to R$ 236,000, or 237% more than the amount declared, suggesting the possibility of ‘outside payments’ backed by cash resources.” On other occasions, Carlos Bolsonaro has claimed the issue was “old news” and that “new facts” were needed to “move the story forward.”
A front
The acquisition of the mansion where Ana Cristina Siqueira Valle lives with her son, Jair Renan Bolsonaro, or “04,” has also raised suspicion. The property, valued at R$ 3.2 million, is located four minutes from the Juscelino Kubitschek Bridge in one of the most affluent, high-value neighborhoods of Brasilia.
The President’s family rented the house from a man who bought the property for R$ 2.9 million on May 31, 2021, mere days before Jair Renan and Ana Cristina moved in. Realtor Geraldo Antônio Machado, the proprietor of the house, lives in another, much more modest home in a condominium in Vicente Pires, 30 kilometers outside Brasilia.
In September, Marcelo Nogueira, a former employee of Ana Cristina, revealed that he was party to the negotiations and claimed Ana Cristina used the realtor as a “front” to buy the mansion.
Former employee claims first Bolsonaro mansion in Barra was purchased with outside money
Marcelo Nogueira is a former employee of Jair Bolsonaro and his family. In an interview, he told UOL that lawyer Ana Cristina Siqueria Valle, the president’s second wife, confessed to him that the family’s first residence in Barra da Tijuca, Rio de Janeiro, where they lived from 2002 to 2007, was financed with “outside money.” Ana Cristina denies this accusation. The two-story house with a pool is located on Rua Maurice Assuf, in the west side of Rio de Janeiro, and was purchased on November 22, 2002. Former Flamengo player, Zico, is a resident of the same condominium.
Before formalizing the deal, Ana Cristina and Jair Bolsonaro arranged for a purchase and sales agreement. Drafted at the real estate assessor’s office, 24º Ofício de Notas, on August 19, 2002, the document states that the mansion was sold for R$ 500,000. Meanwhile, for the purposes of property taxes, the building was valued at the time at R$ 874,000. In other words, the couple received a 43% discount. According to the deal Ana Cristina and Jair struck with the former owners, a check to the tune of R$ 160,000 was paid on closing day, while another R$ 250,000 were due to be settled by December 19, 2002.
The couple informed the real estate assessor’s office that they had already paid R$ 90,000. However, this down payment is not cited in the document. Nor was any mention made of it later, when the purchase and sales agreement was formalized and the remaining R$ 250,000 discharged. Marcelo Nogueira worked for Ana Cristina and Jair Bolsonaro at the time of the purchase. UOL asked him if he knew how the deal had come about. Marcelo informed UOL that he began working for Bolsonaro and Cristina, as the lawyer is known, during Flávio Bolsonaro’s run for state representative in 2002. He was later asked to stay on as an employee in the couple’s new mansion.
He said that one day, while cleaning the office and sorting through paperwork after the move, he saw the deed for the house and told Cristina that the value surprised him, considering the mansion’s size and amenities. According to Marcelo, Cristina then said: “There’s always outside money, isn’t there?” The mansion is currently worth nearly R$ 3 million. “And she bought that place in Barra da Tijuca for R$ 500,000, according to the documentation. But it was more. There was more money behind the deal,” said the former employee. The mansion is one of the assets under review with UOL.
Only now, thanks to Marcelo Nogueiro’s testimony, is it clear that the transaction may have also involved a cash payment. After separating from Cristina in 2007, Bolsonaro kept the house on Rua Maurice Assuf, later selling it to buy another house in Barra da Tijuca, this time in the Vivendas da Barra condominium, where he moved with Michelle, the current First Lady. This purchase took place in 2009. The house was acquired for R$ 409,000, when it was valued at R$ 1 million. Another particularity about this sale is that the former proprietor sold the house to Bolsonaro for 31% less than what she had bought it for four months earlier.
Details about this case were published by Folha de São Paulo in 2018 and were subject to a preliminary inquiry by the Attorney General’s Office before subsequently being archived.
Who is Marcelo Nogueira
Marcelo Nogueira was part of a group of advisors working with Flávio Bolsonaro during his tenure as state representative, from 2003 to 2007. Even though Marcelo worked as an advisor, he was in charge of managing the mansion where Ana Cristina lived, as well as looking after her son, Jair Renan Bolsonaro. When Bolsonaro and Ana Cristina separated, he was removed from his position and employed by Ana Cristina’s law firm, until he left the country in 2009. After returning to Brazil in 2014, Ana Cristina hired him to work at her house again, in Resende, Rio de Janeiro.
Nogueira is the target of an investigation by the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Rio de Janeiro into the practice of “rachadinhas” in Flávio Bolsonaro’s cabinet. His financial privacy and right to tax confidentiality were breached by judicial decree when the case first went to trial in Rio de Janeiro. In February of last year, the Superior Court of Justice, revoked the breach of confidentiality. The investigation is being carried on by the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Rio de Janeiro. In 2021, Marcelo Nogueira parted ways with Ana Cristina over a labor disagreement. Since then, he has gone public about the supposed crimes of his former employer.
Nogueira had already spoken about how he turned in part of his salary, end-of-year bonus, and holiday pay in cash to Ana Cristina. Since then he has also noted that he handed over 80% of his salary when working for Flávio Bolsonaro.
According to those involved
UOL spoke with Edison Magalhães, the mansion’s former proprietor. Edison claimed his wife, now deceased, had been the one who negotiated with Ana Cristina, and that the deal was above board. He claimed that it was such a long time ago, he couldn’t remember the details, though they matched what was written in the agreement.
When speaking with UOL, Cristina denied that any “outside payments” were ever made on the house. According to her, the commercial value of the building was higher because the city of Rio de Janeiro had “artificially inflated” it. “City governments all over Brazil do this in order to charge higher property taxes and increase their revenue,” she asserted. According to Ana Cristina, at the time of the sale, “the building was legally acquired at real market value.” “They’re going after the president during his campaign, speculating about things that never happened twenty years ago. They’re doing this because they can’t find any irregularities in his government,” she affirmed. UOL reached out to President Jair Bolsonaro through the Office of Communications but received no response before publication of this article.
Bolsonaro’s brother-in-law paid in cash for a mansion where he built courts and a shooting range
With a penchant for weapons and a “crude” personality, it wasn’t difficult for José Orestes Fonseca to strike up a friendship with his brother-in-law, Jair Bolsonaro, from whom he got the nickname “Jagunço,” a historical term referring to men who were hired by plantation owners to guard their land. The most expensive piece of real estate paid for in cash by a member of the Bolsonaro family in the past decade belongs to José Orestes and his wife Maria Denise Bolsonaro. The house in question sits on a piece of land that spans over 20,000 m2 and is located in the central region of Cajati, in the interior of São Paulo. The property cost the couple R$ 2.67 million (the equivalent of R$ 3.47 million today, as adjusted by IPCA).
According the Brazilian mint, R$ 2.67 million in 267 R$ 100 bills would weigh 6.5 kilos and easily fit in a travel bag. The property purchased by Bolsonaro’s sister and her husband had served as a guest house for Bunge Fertilizantes, a multinational corporation and pioneer in phosphate mining that spurred the development of Cajati as early as 1940s. The upscale piece of property was formerly used by Bunge’s executives.
The cash purchase of the house and land was recorded in January 2018. Payment was made to a company called Vale, then-owner of the industrial park that once belonged to Bunge. One of the first things the new owners did was paint the roof of the house blue, the trademark color of Campos Mais, a retail chain founded in the 1990s that sells furniture, home appliances, and construction materials. On top of renovating the old house, José Orestes also built a second home for his family on the property, complete with recreational facilities, a leisure area, and a private shooting range that he opened in partnership with his sons, the president’s nephews, in 2020.
Even though the shooting range was formalized over two years ago, it remains unregistered with the Army. In the early 2000s, José Orestes and Maria Denise built an empire of furniture, home-appliance, and novelty stories throughout the Vale do Ribeiro region. Before then, in 1980, they were married in a community property regime. Although the two are now separated, they are still fighting over the division of assets. By law, until the dispute ends, the assets have to remain with the couple—including any new acquisitions. Besides the land and houses in Cajati, the dispute covers nearly a dozen stores, as well as a summer house in Cananéia, on the south coast of São Paulo, complete with a speedboat and jet ski.
Today, the blue roof of the old Vale guest house has faded to its original beige. The grounds are home to several bird species and a Brazilian flag hangs at the highest point of the house—a common gesture by many Bolsonaro supporters. Despite José Orestes’ difficult relationship with his ex-wife, family members still describe him as an admirer and close friend of the president. In August, UOL attempted to contact José Orestes to ask him why he chose to execute real estate transactions in cash but was unable to reach him at home or at the headquarters of his retail chain.
UOL did reach one of Orestes’ children at one of his addresses. The son advised that the family would not be making a statement because they disagreed with the editorial line of Grupo Folha and UOL. In June of this year, the Court of Justice of São Paulo ruled that Orestes Bolsonaro Campos, son of Maria Denise and nephew of Jair Bolsonaro, would stand trial by jury for attempted femicide.
