Two of Brazil’s greatest powers, the Presidency of the Republic and the communications giant, have been in conflict for two years. Until the departure of the station of stars like Tarcísio Meira, Glória Menezes or Antônio Fagundes and the rights to broadcast games are used as a weapon.
“Globo’s billionaire schemes!” and “real corruption is with the Marinho family!”, exclaimed Jair Bolsonaro on Thursday on his social networks. To illustrate, the President of the Republic attached a news report from his ally TV Record, owned by Edir Macedo, bishop of the IURD, about alleged links between the family that controls Grupo Globo and Sérgio Cabral, former governor of Rio de Janeiro serving time. imprisonment, and irregularities in obtaining broadcasting rights for the city’s Olympic Games in 2016.
It was just the last episode of an open war between two of Brazil’s greatest powers: the Planalto Palace, occupied by far-right President Bolsonaro, and Globo, the largest and most influential communication network of the South American giant. A war that has already crossed the limits of politics and reached two of the main products of the channel, soap operas and football.
Politics first: last month, after the arrest of Dario Messer, considered the biggest “money changer” (dollar dealer in the parallel market) in Brazil, Veja magazine reported that, in a plea to the police, the criminal had claimed, without evidence , that the Marinho family, owner of Globo, was among its biggest customers.
Jornal Nacional, Globo’s main news program, echoed the issue, highlighting that no evidence had been presented and adding a denial from the Marinho family itself.
But on social media Bolsonaro surfed the wave of Messer’s denunciation without mercy: he calculated, on his own, how much the “money changer” had spent on Marinho – according to him, about 1.75 billion reais.
The well-articulated supporters of the Government then launched a hashtag under the name #rachadinhadaglobo. In an allusion to the “crack”, the practice of diverting salaries of deputies’ aides into the pocket, of Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, the first-born of the President, in his office. Flávio and dozens more of Bolsonaro’s family and friends are suspected of benefiting from a millionaire scheme for embezzling public money that even served to buy real estate in cash.
