Flávio
Bolsonaro
Files.

The allegation

Between 2003 and 2018, while Flávio Bolsonaro sat in the Rio de Janeiro state assembly (Alerj), prosecutors say his office ran a classic kickback scheme — rachadinha, in Portuguese: aides were hired, kept a slice of their publicly funded salary, and returned the rest. In a November 2020 indictment, the Rio state prosecutor’s office (MP-RJ) accused Flávio of criminal organisation, embezzlement and money laundering. It named twelve ghost employees who, it said, received R$6.1 million. At least R$2 million allegedly reached Fabrício Queiroz, Flávio’s former driver and chief of staff; another R$2 million was withdrawn in cash.

• R$1.2 million moved through Queiroz’s account, flagged by Brazil’s financial intelligence unit, COAF, in December 2018 — including 483 deposits linked to staff.
• R$247,000 in school fees and health-plan bills were paid in cash by Queiroz for Flávio’s family between 2013 and 2018, across 169 bills, prosecutors said.
• More than 90% of her salary was returned by former aide Luiza Sousa Paes, she testified — about R$160,000 over six years.
• Cash deposits into Flávio’s and his wife’s accounts coincided with mortgage payments on two Rio properties, according to the indictment.

“I spent 16 years of my life without a single accusation. The moment the president was elected, the narratives started.”

Flávio Bolsonaro, April 2026, to the Inteligência Ltda. podcast — via BBC Brasil

The record

The case never reached a jury. Judges fought over where it should be heard. The Superior Court of Justice (STJ) annulled a lower court’s authorisation to break Flávio’s bank and tax secrecy, finding it poorly justified. The Supreme Court (STF) then annulled the COAF reports and the evidence derived from them, ruling that the financial intelligence unit could not produce reports on a suspect not yet formally under investigation. In February 2025, Justice Gilmar Mendes rejected an appeal to reopen the investigation. Rio state prosecutors told the BBC the case was closed.

Flávio’s defence called the 2020 charges “a macabre and ill-conceived tale”. He says the money Queiroz collected paid for informal street staff, not kickbacks, and that Queiroz acted without his knowledge.

Queiroz was Jair Bolsonaro’s friend and driver before he became Flávio’s chief of staff in the Rio assembly. In December 2018, a COAF report on his account — R$1.2 million in movements, much of it in round-number cash deposits — detonated the case on the eve of Jair Bolsonaro’s inauguration. He was arrested in June 2020 at a property in Atibaia owned by Frederick Wassef, the family’s lawyer, and later released to house arrest.

Queiroz admitted collecting part of his colleagues’ salaries. His defence was that Flávio did not know: the money, he said, paid for informal staff who worked the streets and events, and he had autonomy over them. Prosecutors rejected that account and charged him alongside Flávio. The case was shelved with the rest.

• 483 deposits were traced to political staff or advisers linked to Flávio, according to the attorney general’s office.
• 169 bills for Flávio’s daughters’ school and the family health plan were paid by Queiroz in cash.
• R$2 million+ allegedly passed through Queiroz; another R$2 million was withdrawn in cash.
• June 2020: arrested at a property belonging to the Bolsonaro family’s lawyer.

“What Queiroz had there in the office, he looked after part of my staff who worked on the street… he had autonomy over those people, and he says he did that.”

Flávio Bolsonaro, explaining Queiroz’s version — via BBC Brasil

The allegation

Willer Tomaz is a lawyer and businessman who describes Flávio as a friend of the family. Federal police first encountered him in the INSS fraud probe, Operação Sem Desconto; Flávio is not a target of that case. But when investigators examined Tomaz’s seized phone, they found material that led to a separate STF inquiry, opened in 2026 under Justice Alexandre de Moraes, into money laundering involving Flávio, Tomaz and former Rio governor Cláudio Castro. The focus: digital payment companies and betting houses licensed by Loterj, Rio’s state lottery, while Castro was governor.

• “Master user” — emails showed Flávio registered in that role on a bank account held by Alcazar Holdings, a Tomaz company registered in Madeira. UOL revealed it; Folha confirmed it.
• R$130 million moved through a single Tomaz account between March and May 2025. The Finance Ministry later identified him as Brazil’s largest bettor, with about R$5 billion in bets.
• First licence — Tomaz’s Cathedral Holdings owns Rede Loto, the first operator licensed by Loterj, in February 2023. Its payment arm, Pixs Cobrança (later RioPag), won a Loterj contract that year.
• Five trips — Flávio, his family and Tomaz flew together to the US, Europe and Africa between January and May 2025. One leg was on a Legacy 650 owned by a company founded by Daniel Vorcaro.
• A hidden room — police found a “secret room” in the Brasília hangar used by Tomaz’s jets and suspect it was used to store cash.

The record

No charges have been filed. Flávio denies being investigated in the case: in a statement to Estadão he said the files “were not even converted into an inquiry” and that describing them as a new inquiry “distorts reality”. The STF docket, confirmed by G1 and BBC Brasil, records an inquiry under Justice Moraes. Tomaz’s office says all his companies are lawful, that Rede Loto never operated bets, and that Flávio never had access to or powers over any of his accounts. Castro says he is a friend of Tomaz but denies any link between that friendship and state decisions.

On 25 October 2026, the night of the election runoff, Moraes ordered Flávio to surrender his passports and barred him from contacting Tomaz. The order remains in force.

“The relationship between the two is a friendship between families, and friendship is not a crime.”

Willer Tomaz’s office, in a statement to BBC Brasil

The allegation

Daniel Vorcaro ran Banco Master until the Central Bank liquidated it in November 2025 after detecting multibillion-dollar fraud. He was arrested that month, released to house arrest, and arrested again in March 2026. Federal police put the alleged fraud at about US$2.3 billion, with some 800,000 clients; the Rio state pension fund, Rioprevidência, had R$3.69 billion invested in the bank.

Flávio’s link is a film. Dark Horse is a flattering biopic of Jair Bolsonaro. Between late 2024 and 2025, Flávio negotiated directly with Vorcaro a sponsorship contract worth about R$134 million. Roughly half — R$61 million to R$70 million — was paid before the bank collapsed. The money went not to the production company but to a US real-estate fund run by Paulo Calixto, a lawyer and friend of Flávio’s brother Eduardo. Police are investigating corruption, money laundering, tax evasion and currency evasion.

• July 2026: Justice André Mendonça opens the inquiry at the request of federal police. It is unsealed in September.
• About US$12 million was traced from Vorcaro to the US fund linked to Eduardo Bolsonaro, according to police.
• December 2025: Flávio visits Vorcaro at home while the banker is under house arrest with an ankle monitor. Flávio says he went to end the relationship.
• Eduardo Bolsonaro says the transfers were meant to shield the money from Justice Moraes, not to bribe anyone. He told Reuters the bribery allegation was “a lie”.

The record

The inquiry is ongoing. No charges have been filed against Flávio in this case. He says the arrangement was a private sponsorship with no counterpart and no public money. The production company has not detailed how the money was spent, according to the BBC. The case has also pulled in the Supreme Court itself: Justice Mendonça unsealed documents purporting to show Vorcaro seeking advice from Moraes, prompting a public dispute between the two justices.

“I’m talking about a request for private sponsorship for a private film, with absolutely no counterpart.”

Flávio Bolsonaro, 15 October 2026, in a TV Globo interview

The allegation

Flávio’s old assembly office employed Raimunda Magalhães and Danielle Mendonça da Costa — the mother and then-wife of Adriano da Nóbrega, an expelled military police captain who became one of Rio’s most wanted militia leaders and, according to prosecutors, headed the Escritório do Crime (the “Crime Office”) hit squad. Both were dismissed in 2018 when the kickback scandal broke; prosecutors suspected them of being ghost employees in the same scheme. Adriano was killed in a police operation in Bahia in February 2020.

Then, in September 2026, Estadão reported that Flávio’s Senate office had sent a R$199,999 amendment in 2024 to a supposed sports project in Rio after a request from Robson Calixto, known as “Peixe” — a militia member convicted by the STF in February 2026 for his role in the murder of councillor Marielle Franco. Police found messages between Calixto and Flávio’s aide Maria de Fátima Bezerra Castro negotiating the money.

• Adriano da Nóbrega was expelled from the military police in 2014, accused of involvement with illegal gambling, and later described as a militia leader. Killed in 2020.
• Two relatives — his mother and then-wife — were employed in Flávio’s assembly office until 2018.
• R$199,999 was sent in 2024, after negotiations in 2023 between the militia member and Flávio’s Senate aide.
• February 2026: Robson Calixto is convicted by the STF over the 2018 murder of Marielle Franco.

The record

No charge has been filed against Flávio over the amendment or the hires. His office says the money was allocated under the law and the Ministry of Sport’s technical criteria, that the executing entity presented receipts and returned unused funds, and that responsibility for spending lies with the entity, not the parliamentarian. He did not comment on his aide’s messages with Calixto.

“The amendment was allocated under the law and the technical criteria of the Ministry of Sport… Responsibility for executing the funds lies with the beneficiary entity, not the parliamentarian.”

Flávio Bolsonaro’s office, in a statement to Estadão

The allegation

In January 2021 Flávio and his wife, Fernanda, bought a house in the Setor de Mansões Dom Bosco, in Lago Sul — one of Brasília’s most expensive addresses. The seller was the businessman Juscelino Sarkis, son of one of the capital’s best-known pioneers. The price was R$5.97 million. The couple paid about R$2.9 million from their own funds and financed the remaining R$3.1 million with BRB, the Brasília public bank, over 30 years.

The questions are about the terms — and the speed. The contract carried 3.71% a year, below the 4.85% average BRB was charging in 2021. To qualify, the couple declared joint monthly income of R$36,957 to the bank; BRB’s own simulator, for a loan of that size and term, indicated a minimum of about R$46,400. And although the debt was written for 360 instalments, it was gone in 37 months: six extra payments, from R$198,000 to R$997,000, totalling R$3.4 million, the last of them in March 2024.

The house was worth more than three times the R$1.74 million in assets Flávio had declared to the electoral court in 2018. The down payment, he said at the time, came from selling the property he lived in and a stake in a chocolate shop.

• R$5.97m purchase price in January 2021, for a 1,100 m² house with pool, gym and spa on a plot of about 2,400 m².
• R$3.1m financed by BRB over 30 years at 3.71% a year — against a 4.85% average at the bank that year.
• 37 months to clear it: six extra payments adding up to R$3.4m, the last in March 2024.
• October 2026: the loan becomes a front of the federal police inquiry into Daniel Vorcaro and Banco Master’s dealings with BRB.

The record

No charge has been filed. The challenge to the loan began with a lawsuit filed by Erika Kokay, a Workers’ Party congresswoman from Brasília, who argued that BRB broke its own internal rules and asked for the contract to be annulled. A first-instance court dismissed it; an appeals court overturned that ruling and sent the case back for more documents. The Federal District prosecutor’s office opened its own investigation and concluded there were no irregularities. BRB says the conditions were open to any client who met its criteria, that four separate incomes were assessed, and that the early payoff itself shows the public bank lost nothing.

What changed in 2026 is who else sat on the bank’s board. The directors in place in January 2021 — including then-president Paulo Henrique Costa — are among those the federal police now investigate for alleged fraudulent management in the Master case. Costa was arrested; his lawyers say the loan to the senator followed the bank’s governance in full and gave him “no advantage whatsoever”. BRB’s independent audit, commissioned after the board changed, flagged the operation and sent its report to the police in February 2026. Flávio’s lawyers say a court has already ruled the loan lawful and loss-free, in a decision that has become final, and that the subject returned only because of the election.

“The fact that I paid off the BRB debt only proves the bank didn’t lend me money because of my green eyes, but because I was able to honour the payments.”

Flávio Bolsonaro, July 2024