Flávio Bolsonaro denies Brazilian newspaper claims he once employed the mother and wife of an alleged death squad leader

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, has used his international debut to sound the death knell for South America’s “Bolivarian” left and proclaim a new, conservative era of clean governance and godliness in the region.

But his terse and widely panned appearance at the World Economic Forum on Tuesday was overshadowed by a snowballing scandal back home involving one of his sons, the recently elected senator Flávio Bolsonaro.

As the president – who came to power vowing to free Brazil from corruption and criminality – prepared to take to the stage in Davos, reports in one of Brazil’s leading newspapers linked his son with members of a Rio de Janeiro death squad called the Escritório do Crime (The Crime Bureau).

Quick guide What is Davos 2020? Show Hide Davos is a Swiss ski resort now more famous for hosting the annual four-day conference for the World Economic Forum. For participants it is a festival of networking. Getting an invitation is a sign you have made it – and the elaborate system of badges reveals your place in the Davos hierarchy. The meeting is sponsored by a huge number of international banks and corporations.

For critics, “Davos man” is shorthand for the globe-trotting elite, disconnected from their home countries after spending too much time in the club-class lounge. Others just wonder if it is all a big waste of time. The 2020 meeting is being advertised as focusing on seven themes: Fairer economies, better business, healthy futures, future of work, tech for good, beyond geopolitics and how to save the planet. Young climate activists and school strikers from around the world will be present at the event to put pressure on world leaders over that last theme.

Rio broadsheet O Globo claimed that during Flávio Bolsonaro’s time as a Rio lawmaker, he had employed both the mother and wife of the gang’s alleged leader, a former special forces agent called Adriano Magalhães da Nóbrega.

Nóbrega, who is reportedly on the run after police targeted his group with an operation dubbed “The Untouchables”called, is alleged to be a senior member of what O Globo Rio’s “most lethal and secretive phalanx of hired guns”.

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Police and prosecutors reportedly suspect members of The Crime Bureau were behind the still unsolved murder of Rio councillor Marielle Franco last year.

O Globo also claimed that the alleged gangster’s wife and mother had been recommended to Flávio Bolsonaro by Fabrício Queiroz, a longstanding friend of Brazil’s president who has been pictured socialising with Jair Bolsonaro in a photo where both men appear topless.

Marcelo Freixo, a leftist lawmaker and friend of Marielle Franco, was among those demanding answers on Tuesday. “The Bolsonaro family owes society explanations,” he tweeted.

Flávio Bolsonaro rejected the report – which follows a trickle of other damaging allegations about his financial dealings – and claimed he was the “victim of a defamation campaign” designed to hurt his father. “Those who have made mistakes must be held accountable for their acts,” he said in a statement.

Celso Rocha de Barros, a political columnist for the Folha de São Paulo newspaper, said: “The Bolsonaro family must be in panic.”

“It’s hard to measure the repercussions this might have … It’s a bomb – a nuclear bomb,” De Barros added.

The growing scandal jarred with Jair Bolsonaro’s claims in Davos to be spearheading a crusade against corruption and organized crime.

During an unusually brief six-minute address to the annual summit, Bolsonaro said he hoped the world would see his “new” cleaner Brazil with fresh eyes after a massive corruption scandal that has ravaged the country’s political elite.

“I took over a Brazil in the midst of a profound ethical, moral and economic crisis. We are committed to changing our history … We want to govern by example,” Bolsonaro declared.

The far-right nationalist pitched himself as a flag-bearer for Latin America’s new conservative vanguard. “We do not want a Bolivarian America,” he said, in a reference to Venezuela’s late president Hugo Chávez, who hoped to unite the continent with an alliance of progressive leaders.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest One of Brazil’s leading newspapers has linked Flávio Bolsonaro with members of a Rio de Janeiro death squad called the Escritório do Crime. Photograph: Sergio Moraes/Reuters

Bolsonaro said that rightwing leaders such as Argentina’s Mauricio Macri and Chile’s Sebastián Piñera were determined “the left will not prevail in this region”.

The Brazilian president also painted himself as a global statesman seeking “a world of peace, liberty and democracy”. “With the slogan: ‘God above all else’, I believe our relations [with the world] will bring unending progress for all,” Bolsonaro declared.

Political observers and audience members were unimpressed by Bolsonaro’s coming out on the world stage.

“He scares me … Brazil is a big country and deserves someone better,” the Nobel-winning economist Robert Shiller was quoted as saying by Valor Econômico, Brazil’s top financial newspaper.

Another audience member reportedly complained: “[A] disaster. I wanted to like him but he said nothing. Why did he even come?”

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De Barros called Bolsonaro’s short address a generic “fiasco” that had probably been cut because of the scandal unfolding back home.

Speaking on the eve of Bolsonaro’s Davos speech, José Roberto de Toledo, a political journalist from the magazine Piauí, said his domestic popularity ratings remained high.

“Consumer confidence is the highest in years … money is coming in from overseas. The dollar has gone down. The stock market is breaking records … No one can bear another five years of crisis. Everyone wants to press the restart button.”

But he speculated that Bolsonaro would pay a political price for the growing whiff of corruption surrounding his son. “Flávio has put a sword [of Damocles] over his father’s head that will be used to blackmail him, in congress, in the courts, on social media and in the press. It will be a weight he will always have to carry – and the likelihood is for that weight to grow with time.”