Chico Rodrigues is deputy leader of the Government of the Brazilian President, Jair Bolsonaro, in the upper house of Congress.
The seizure of the money hidden between the senator’s buttocks was revealed by Crusoé magazine on Wednesday night.
Chico Rodrigues was one of the targets of the operation “Operation Desvid-19” carried out at the request of the Comptroller General of the Union (CGU), an inspection body, in the state of Roraima.
In this operation, police officers are investigating an alleged criminal scheme to embezzle public funds by sending bids to the Roraima Department of Health, which would involve approximately 20 million reais (3 million euros) that should be used to combat covidences. 19.
CGU said in a statement that it identified several indications of the practice of inflated prices in contracts made by the Roraima Department of Health for the purchase of protective equipment for health professionals of doctors and nurses and rapid tests to detect covid-19, among other items .
“The police inquiry pointed out that the funds were directed, through fraudulent bidding processes, to specific companies, which were then hired by the Secretariat,” said a statement issued by CGU on Operation Desvid-19.
The state of Roraima received around 171 million reais (26 million euros) from the central government through the National Health Fund (FNS) in 2020.
Of this total amount, 55 million reais (8.3 million euros) were transferred specifically to combat covid-19.
“Operation Desvid-19” carried out seven search and seizure warrants in the city of Boa Vista, capital of Roraima.
Brazil is the Portuguese-speaking country most affected by the pandemic and one of the hardest hit in the world, when counting the second number of deaths (more than 5.1 million cases and 151,747 deaths), after the United States.
The covid-19 pandemic has already claimed more than one million and eighty-seven thousand deaths and more than 38.2 million cases of infection worldwide, according to a report made by the French agency AFP.
The disease is transmitted by a new coronavirus detected in late December in Wuhan, a city in central China.
After Europe succeeded China as the center of the pandemic in February, the American continent is now the one with the most confirmed cases and the most deaths.
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