PL suspends Bolsonaro’s salary and activities after serving prison sentence

The Liberal Party (PL) suspended former president Jair Bolsonaro’s salary and activities after he began serving the 27-year prison sentence to which he was sentenced.

The party informs that it will cancel the activities and remuneration of Bolsonaro, who is honorary president of the party, due to the suspension of political rights due to the conviction, “while the effects of the condemnatory ruling in AP (criminal action) 2,668 continue”.

The party says that the measure is to comply with law 9,096/95, whose article 22 provides that the party must “immediately cancel” someone’s party membership in the event of death, loss of political rights, expulsion, “other forms provided for in the statute, with mandatory communication to the person affected within forty-eight hours of the decision” and “affiliation to another party, as long as the person communicates the fact to the judge of the respective Electoral Zone”.

Bolsonaro’s salary is R$33,873.67, according to the PL’s reporting to the Superior Electoral Court (TSE). In August, the national president of the party, Valdemar Costa Neto, consulted lawyer Marcelo Bessa about the possibility of maintaining the former president’s remuneration even with house arrest.

Bessa issued an opinion in which he concluded that it was “legally possible and advisable for the company to keep the employment contract and salary payments active”. He argued that no “specific restrictions that prevent remote work activity” by Bolsonaro were verified.

Prison in the PF

Bolsonaro has been in a special cell at the Regional Superintendency of the Federal Police in Brasília since Saturday, 22, when he was preventively arrested for trying to violate the electronic ankle bracelet and raising suspicions of escape with the Federal Police.

On Tuesday, the 25th, the minister of the Federal Supreme Court (STF) Alexandre de Moraes closed the process and ordered the beginning of the sentence. The remaining convicts in the “crucial core” of the coup plot were taken to different units of the Armed Forces and the penitentiary system.

Bolsonaro has been visited by his family over the last week, with authorization from the STF. Former first lady Michelle Bolsonaro, who also receives a salary as president of PL Mulher (R$ 33,873.67), and her three children who live in Brazil – senator Flávio (PL-RJ) and councilors Carlos (PL-RJ) and Renan (SC) – went to see him at the PF.

Michelle has been sending lunch boxes to her husband, brought by one of her brothers, Eduardo Torres, one of Bolsonaro’s main companions during his house arrest, since family members could visit him without asking for permission.