Brazil’s President Bolsonaro tells reporter ‘I want to punch you in the face’ after he was asked about payments into his wife’s bank account
- Jair Bolsonaro threatened a journalist from the O Globo newspaper on Sunday
- The paper condemned his ‘aggression’ towards a reporter acting ‘professionally’
- Bolsonaro was asked about claims that an aide paid £9,800 to his wife Michelle
Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro threatened to punch a reporter on Sunday after he was asked about payments into his wife’s bank account.
‘I want to punch you in the face, OK?’, Bolsonaro replied to a journalist from the newspaper O Globo, according to audio released by the daily.
Reports claim that an aide to the president’s son deposited £9,800 in cheques into first lady Michelle Bolsonaro’s account, in a case which has dogged the family.
Soon after Bolsonaro’s outburst, the newspaper issued a statement condemning his ‘aggression’ towards a journalist who was ‘carrying out a job in a professional manner’.
Outburst: Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro (right) threatened to punch a reporter for asking about payments to his wife Michelle (left)
Such intimidation ‘shows that Jair Bolsonaro does not acknowledge the duty of a public servant … to be accountable to the public,’ the statement said.
Brazilian media reported earlier this month that the Bolsonaro aide, Fabricio Queiroz, had deposited the money between 2011 and 2018.
Queiroz was an aide to now-senator Flavio Bolsonaro, the president’s eldest son, when he was a Rio de Janeiro state legislator.
The former aide is under arrest in an investigation into bank deposits made at the time amounting to 1.2million reais (£163,000).
Queiroz and Flavio Bolsonaro are under investigation for a scheme that allegedly swindled pay from government employees in the years before the elder Bolsonaro became president in January 2019.
The first lady has said nothing about the case.
Questions about Queiroz have continued to hound the Bolsonaro family in an investigation that has appeared to annoy the president.
Anger at corruption among Brazil’s elite was partly what propelled Bolsonaro to victory in the 2018 election.
Bolsonaro was surrounded by supporters on Sunday (pictured) while visiting the residence of an adviser in the capital Brasilia
The Globo reporter was part of a group that met Bolsonaro after his regular Sunday visit to the Metropolitan Cathedral in Brasilia.
The president ignored protests from other journalists after the remarks and left without making further comments.
Bolsonaro has also been under pressure over his dismissive handling of the coronavirus crisis.
Brazil has piled up more than 3.6million infections and 114,000 deaths, the second-highest totals in the world after the United States.
The former army captain has played down the virus as a ‘little flu’ and raged against the lockdowns which many regional leaders imposed against his will.
Like his ally Donald Trump, Bolsonaro has also touted the use of the unproven anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for Covid-19.
Bolsonaro, 65, spent more than two weeks in quarantine after contracting the virus in early July before later announcing he had tested negative.