Almost six years ago, Brazil was left shocked by the assassination of Marielle Franco, a Rio de Janeiro city councilor who was gunned down alongside her driver as she returned home from giving a lecture. She was 38 years old.
At first, the question on everyone’s lips was “Who Killed Marielle?” But after two hired guns were arrested for the crime a year later, the much bigger question emerged: who ordered the killing of Marielle Franco?
The answer to that, more than half a decade on, is still not clear cut. But with the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva motivated to finally solve the crime, and revelations pertaining to the investigation from news website The Intercept Brasil this week, it does appear that we are that much closer to finally closing one of the highest profile cases in recent Brazilian history.
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In this episode:
- Euan Marshall is deputy editor at The Brazilian Report. He mainly reports on environmental issues.
Background reading:
- Marielle Franco’s assassination in 2018 was the first and most brutal act of political violence in what was a tortured election year in Brazil. Then-candidate Jair Bolsonaro was stabbed during a public rally, and shots were fired against Lula’s campaign buses.
- In March last year, as the crime completed five years without a solution, we discussed the prospects of the investigation under the Lula government, and its apparent desire to finally solve the case.
- In July, the Justice Ministry announced that former police officer Élcio Queiroz, charged with being the getaway driver in the assassination, had signed a plea bargain agreement, confessing to his involvement in the case.
- Much of the recent impetus around the Marielle case stems from the investigation going federal at the beginning of last year. Ms. Franco’s family were initially against this possibility during the Jair Bolsonaro government, but changed their mind after Lula came into office.
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Transcript of this episode (by Cockatoo)
Gustavo Ribeiro: Almost six years ago, Brazil was left shocked by the assassination of Marielle Franco, a Rio de Janeiro city councilor who was gunned down alongside her driver as she returned home from giving a lecture. She was 38 years old. At first, the question on everyone’s lips was, who killed Marielle? But after two hired guns were arrested for the crime a year later, the much bigger question emerged, who ordered the killing of Marielle Franco? The answer to that, more than a half decade on, is still not clear cut.
But with the Lula administration motivated to finally solve the crime and revelations from the news website The Intercept Brazil this week pertaining to the investigation, it does appear that we are much closer to finally closing one of the highest profile cases in recent Brazilian history. I’m Gustavo Ribeiro, editor-in-chief of the Brazilian Report. This is Explaining Brazil.
Euan Marshall, deputy editor of the Brazilian Report. Hello.
Euan Marshall: Hi, Gustavo.
Gustavo Ribeiro: So, Euan, we’ve talked about Marielle Franco’s assassination several times on this podcast. We have covered it exhaustively on our website. But just to give our Brazilian Report listeners a very brief reminder about the case, can you just recap who was Marielle Franco and why her assassination was a motive of such big commotion in Brazil and abroad?
Euan Marshall: Sure. Yes. So in March 2018, Rio de Janeiro City Councilor Marielle Franck was murdered. She was on her way home from a speaking engagement in the city center. She was along with her driver, Anderson Gomez. Their car had been followed for about half an hour and nothing was stolen from the scene. So that kind of made it very clear from the outset that we were dealing with an assassination. And the case was particularly symbolic not just because of its brutality, with a known political figure being killed in the middle of one of Brazil’s biggest cities, but mainly because of who Marielle Franco was. She was black, gay, left-wing, and she was born in a favela. So for her to be killed in cold blood was such a shock to Brazilian society, and it was taken as a clear political message to many marginalized groups.
Gustavo Ribeiro: Yeah, no, and I’d like to add that 2018 was a particularly violent year in Brazilian politics. We saw that year fires being shot at a campsite where Lula was at, at the beginning of the year. And then, of course, during the presidential campaign trail, Jair Bolsonaro, the far-right politician who ended up winning the presidential election in 2018, he was stabbed and nearly killed in a September attack. So, yes, and Marielle Franco was one of the episodes of this very bloody year in Brazilian politics.
Euan Marshall: Yeah, and it was the first of these violent episodes in that year of 2018. And, you know, as you said at the very beginning of the show, who killed Marielle was kind of like a rallying cry, not just in Brazil, but for, you know, a lot of groups around the world we would see protests and marches in Europe and the US with that same slogan and a year later former police officers Ronnie Lessa and Elcio Queiroz were both arrested for carrying out the assassination. Lessa was charged as the gunman and Queiroz was the getaway driver. Queiroz has since confessed and now Lessa has finalized his own plea bargain and that is where we’re at today.
Right, and the very latest developments concern this plea deal with the Intercept Brazil reporting that Ronnie Lessa pointed the finger at someone who enjoys legal benefits that are only reserved for authorities and the Intercept Brazil says specifically that this person is Rio de Janeiro politician Domingos Brazão, which they say was confirmed by sources as involved in the investigations.
Gustavo Ribeiro: So I mean, I’m sure a lot of Brazilians don’t know who Domingos Brazão is, but particularly a foreign audience might need some context here.
Euan Marshall: Well, yeah, Domingos Brazão, he’s well known in the Rio de Janeiro state politics. These days, he’s a member of the Rio State Accounts Court. But he and his family have enjoyed decades of influence and power in the state’s political scene. Domingos himself first came into politics as a city councilor of the state capital, Rio de Janeiro, and then he became a state lawmaker soon after and he held that post for 16 years. And in 2015, he was picked to serve on the State Accounts Court in Rio de Janeiro and that is, you know, he gets tasked with overseeing public spending by the state government and in all of Rio’s municipalities.
Gustavo Ribeiro: And just a parenthesis, Rio de Janeiro State Accounts Court is literally, it literally has every single one of its board members under investigation, not necessarily for murder, like the intercept Brazil says Domingos Brazão is, but for very different crimes. So in this account, court sort of epitomizes how problematic Rio de Janeiro politics can be, right?
Euan Marshall: Yeah. And Domingos’ brothers, Chiquinho and Pedro, they’re both in politics as well. Chiquinho is a federal lawmaker, while Pedro Brazão serves in the Rio State Assembly, a job that Domingos Brazão used to have himself. And the Brazão clan, its political stronghold in Rio is in a neighborhood called Jacarepaguá which is in the west of the city which has been notoriously controlled by paramilitary police mafias which are known as Militias in Rio de Janeiro and which Marielle Franco spent a considerable part of her career fighting against.
In 2011, Domingos Brazil was briefly impeached after he was charged with vote buying in Jacarepaguá. Investigations found that he distributed medicine, food, toothbrushes and even wheelchairs with his name on them ahead of the election. That matter then went to the Federal Electoral Court which issued an injunction and allowed him to remain in office.
And Domingos Brazil was also tied up in one of the offshoots of Operation Car Wash, which investigated a bribery scandal in Rio de Janeiro in which public officials had received kickbacks from government contracts and as you mentioned there earlier, Gustavo, that affected a lot of members of Rio’s Accounts Court. Domingos Brazil was arrested as part of that investigation but he was released by a court order just a week later and at the time of Marielle Franco’s murder he had been suspended from his position on the State Accounts Court.
Gustavo Ribeiro: And Domingos Brazão has been mentioned in this case a few times before, right? I mean this latest information is hardly a bolt from the blue.
Euan Marshall: You’re right, it isn’t. Domingos Brazão was actually one of the very first suspects singled out by the Federal Police as having ordered the crime and he was formally accused of trying to obstruct the investigation. That accusation, which came from federal prosecutors, said that Brazão had managed to plant a phony witness in the investigation. That witness pointed the finger not at him, but at his political rival, Marcelo Siciliano, and militia boss Orlando Curicica, who were both disputing influence in Jacarepagua at the time. And then last year, the aforementioned getaway driver, Elcho Queiroz, he mentioned the involvement of Domingos Brazil in his confession to the police.
Gustavo Ribeiro: So if he were to be the guy, is there any indication as to the motive for ordering the killing of a politician?
Euan Marshall: Well, there are a few theories, but obviously without full access to the investigation, that’s really all we can go on at the moment. But one of the most important links cited by people close to the investigation is Marcelo Freixo, who is a former federal lawmaker and the current president of the Brazilian Tourism Board.
During the 2000s, when Freixo was a state lawmaker in Rio, he led a parliamentary inquiry into the state’s malicious problem and its links to politics, during which time he had some very public disputes with Domingos Brazil and many of his allies. And in fact, in the sequel to that famous Brazilian action film Elite Squad starring Wagner Moura, the politician character who investigates the militias, he was actually based on Marcelo Freixo.
Anyway, Brazil was eventually named in the inquiry’s final report as one of the kind of select group of politicians who were authorized to campaign in the militia controlled region of Rio das Pedras, which is adjacent to Brazil’s heartland of Jacarepaguá. Now, before she was elected as a city council member in 2016, Marielle Franco actually worked as a staffer for Marcelo Freixo.
So, the potential suspicion there is that her assassination may have been a way to get some sort of revenge on Marcelo Freixo, but these are merely theories that the investigation is looking into.
Gustavo Ribeiro: So, if Brazão has been pointed at by both men arrested for carry down the crime, what’s going to happen now?
Euan Marshall: Well, unsurprisingly, it’s complicated. Plea bargains are a mechanism that allow defendants to reduce their sentences or obtain better conditions in exchange for turning state’s evidence and helping with the investigation. But of course, you know, these people are motivated to give up dirt on others whether that be true or not. So all of these claims have to be checked and double-checked.
But hypothetically, if the police attention was to turn completely to Domingos Brazão, he actually enjoys an important layer of protection because he is a member of the Rio State Accounts Court. He can only be put on trial by the Superior Court of Justice, which is the second highest court in Brazil. So that court would have to confirm and ratify Horny Lessa’s plea bargain and then it would have to be taken from there.
Gustavo Ribeiro: You know, when we were speaking here on the podcast last year on the fifth anniversary of the assassination, saying that it looked like the Lula government wanted to solve the case once and for all, is it a coincidence that just one year later things seem to be opening up a little bit more?
Euan Marshall: I think you could definitely give some credit to the federal government, yeah. I mean, since the Justice Ministry opened its federal investigation into the assassination and, you know, since we did our last podcast on the matter, we have the two men arrested for carrying out the murder, both entering plea bargains in a bid to kind of get us closer to the answer that everyone has always wanted to know, that is who ordered the assassination.
So, I mean, we’ve certainly made more progress in the last 12 months than we have in the last five previous years, I’d say.
And it’s also worth noting that Marielle’s family were initially against the murder investigation going federal and that’s because under the Jair Bolsonaro government, they thought that the case would end up going nowhere. But they changed their mind after Lula came into office as president.
Gustavo Ribeiro: And speaking of Jair Bolsonaro, over the years there have been a lot of suspicions regarding links between the assassination and the Bolsonaro family. Certainly a lot of accusations were thrown around on social media against the former president and his families. Where are we with that?
Euan Marshall: Yeah, I mean a lot of it is just kind of circumstantial and tenuous really to tell the truth. There are certainly some links and connections between members of the Bolsonaro family and some of the figures involved in the investigation, but absolutely nothing linking the former president or his family to the crime itself. Although you know there are certainly some people trying to force that narrative into existence. As an example of some of the links we have, in 2019 Jair Bolsonaro awarded Chiquinho Brazão, who is the aforementioned brother of Domingos Brazão, he awarded him with a diplomatic passport.
Ronnie Lessa, the man who is charged with being the gunman of the assassination, he lived in the same housing complex as Jair Bolsonaro in Rio de Janeiro, and two of their kids reportedly dated. So, you know, it’s all at that kind of totally speculative level.
Gustavo Ribeiro: Right, and thanks Euan. And we will be keeping a watchful eye on all the upcoming developments in this case. Let’s hope it doesn’t take another six years to reach a conclusion.
Euan Marshall: Exactly. Thanks, Gustavo.
Gustavo Ribeiro: If you like Explaining Brazil, please give us a 5-star rating wherever you get your podcasts. It takes only a second and it will help us reach a wider audience. Or better yet, you can subscribe to the Brazilian Report, the journalistic engine behind this podcast. We have a subscription-based business model and your memberships fuel our journalism and keep us going and growing. And thanks to our subscribers,
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Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening. Explaining Brazil will be back next week.
Transcribed with Cockatoo
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