Rio de Janeiro mayor arrested in corruption investigation

Police have arrested Rio de Janeiro’s outgoing mayor Marcelo Crivella, an ally of Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, in an investigation into alleged corruption at city hall.

Four carloads of police and prosecutors arrived at the mayor’s house in the affluent Barra da Tijuca neighbourhood before 6am, the website of O Globo newspaper said.

The arrest comes days before Crivella’s mandate ends and just weeks after the deeply unpopular mayor – a gospel singer who had called homosexuality a “terrible evil” and shunned carnival – was thrashed in mayoral elections by one of his predecessors, Eduardo Paes.

Crivella is an evangelical bishop and former senator, who served as minister of fishing in the government of Dilma Rousseff. He is the nephew of Edir Macedo, who founded the powerful Universal Church of God evangelical church.

“This is political persecution,” Crivella told reporters on reaching police headquarters. “It was the government that most fought corruption.” He hoped for justice, he said. Police also arrested the businessman Rafael Alves, the mayor’s “man of confidence” who had an office in city hall yet no official role, the G1 site said – his brother Marcelo was Rio’s tourism chief. The former police officer and city councillor Fernando Moraes was also arrested, G1 said.

Prosecutors began investigating a “business counter” that allegedly operated inside city hall in 2019, O Globo reported in December 2019, after the money changer Sérgio Mizrahy signed a plea bargain deal. He alleged that bribes were paid to firm up city hall contracts and get outstanding debts paid.

In September an investigation by TV Globo found that city hall employees known as “Crivella’s guardians” were paid to stand outside hospitals and stop citizens complaining about healthcare. Crivella said there was no basis to the accusations.

The former Rio state governor Sérgio Cabral is serving a prison sentence for corruption. His successor Luiz Fernando Souza – known as “Bigfoot” – was released from prison a year ago. Rio’s latest governor, Wilson Witzel, was suspended over alleged Covid-19 related graft in August. He has denied the accusations. “Like other governors, I am being used politically, possibly,” he said at the time.

Crivella’s arrest comes as a blow to Bolsonaro, whose family home is in Rio. Bolsonaro won election in 2018 on an anti-corruption platform, and supported Crivella’s re-election bid in a video the two men recorded together. The two men danced together on stage at an evangelical Christian event in Rio last February.