The campaign of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will use Brazil's free electoral TV and radio airtime, plus social media, to explore the release on Friday (11) of details of a Supreme Federal Court (STF) inquiry that names Senator Flávio Bolsonaro among those investigated over the financing of the film "Dark Horse". Flávio, eldest son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, is the presidential candidate of the right-wing PL party. According to the blog of Valdo Cruz on G1, one ad already prepared states: "Justice confirms: Flávio Bolsonaro is under investigation for corruption and money laundering in Dark Horse". Others are being produced to stress that the candidate is personally investigated in the case.
The Federal Police requested the inquiry, the Attorney General's Office backed it, and Justice André Mendonça, who oversees the Banco Master case at the court, authorized it in July. On Friday, at the request of Chief Justice Edson Fachin, Mendonça unsealed part of the file. According to G1, the papers state that Flávio worked to secure about 70 million reais from Daniel Vorcaro, the former banker who controlled the now-defunct Banco Master, for the project, a biopic of Jair Bolsonaro. Released documents show Vorcaro transferred 61 million reais to the producers through a fund based in the United States.
Why the campaign sees an opening
The move follows weeks of political damage from the crisis between the court and Banco Master. Campaign members assess that Lula's political closeness to Justice Alexandre de Moraes pulled the president into the public debate on the crisis, G1 reports. In the coordinators' reading, the disclosure of the inquiry against Flávio offers a chance to shift part of the political focus and hit the president's main opponent directly.
"Lula is not under investigation. Flávio Bolsonaro is under investigation. We will hammer on this to show the difference between the two candidates in this Banco Master crisis."
The statement came from one of the campaign coordinators, in a conversation with the G1 blog. The internal reading has an echo elsewhere: the Painel column of Folha de S.Paulo reports that after weeks of concern over Flávio's growth in the polls, the campaign believes the inquiry revelations should interrupt the senator's favorable wave.
Flávio denies any wrongdoing. On Thursday, the Federal Police carried out 49 search warrants in Operation Make Up, which investigates suspected misuse of public funds from congressional amendments and targets congressman Mario Frias (PL) and Karina Ferreira da Gama, producer of "Dark Horse". In a live YouTube broadcast, the candidate accused Justice Flávio Dino, who oversees that operation, of acting politically to harm his candidacy, and defended the film. "With complete peace of mind, once again, there is nothing wrong with Bolsonaro's movie. Turn it inside out, pull it from top to bottom, back to front, from side to side. Everything there was perfectly in order, private investment in a private film," he said, according to BBC News Brasil.
The ads should start running in the next blocks of electoral airtime, less than a month before the first round of the presidential election, set for October 4. The rest of the inquiry remains under seal at the STF.