Brazilian far-right blogger Oswaldo Eustáquio is a fugitive from justice. The influencer is accused of inciting and organizing putschist acts, like the January 8 riots — when angry mobs stormed and ransacked government buildings in Brasília — and is blocked from using bank accounts in the country.
However, he informed The Brazilian Report that he routinely goes back and forth between Brazil and Paraguay, where he requested asylum, carrying wads of cash.
This week, Supreme Court Alexandre de Moraes, who oversees probes into anti-democratic movements, pushed to make his life more difficult, asking the Federal Police to include Mr. Eustáquio on Interpol’s wanted list.
Mr. Eustáquio is a famously loyal supporter of former President Jair Bolsonaro. Formerly a low-profile journalist from the state of Paraná, he made a nationwide anime for himself by broadcasting extremist far-right demonstrations on social media. In 2020, he set up a campsite in Brasília focused on harassing Supreme Court justices, who are lightning rods of far-right vitriol.
Despite being repeatedly arrested and subject to precautionary measures, his loyalty did not go unrewarded, and during the Bolsonaro years the blogger’s wife held a senior position at the Human Rights Ministry.
Mr. Eustáquio was a key figure in the January 8 riots, considered the most severe attack on democratic institutions since the return of Brazilian democracy in the 1980s. For months, he riled up Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters who gathered outside Army barracks to urge the military to stage a coup after Mr. Bolsonaro lost the 2022 election to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
As The Brazilian Report revealed in January, Mr. Eustáquio was pushing for riots on December 5, 2022 — while Mr. Bolsonaro was still in power. The plan was to instill chaos in order for the far-right former leader to declare a state of emergency and thereby prevent a peaceful transfer of power.
Mr. Eustáquio was also involved in an attempt to storm the Federal Police headquarters in Brasília in December 2022. Avoiding an arrest warrant, he sought refuge in the official presidential residence, according to his lawyers. The influencer has since toured Latin America spreading far-right rhetoric in countries such as Paraguay, Mexico, Argentina, Costa Rica, Panama, Uruguay, Chile, and Peru.
As reported in our Latin America Weekly newsletter, allies of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro joined the campaign of Santiago Peña of Paraguay’s Colorado Party — who recently won the presidential election in a landslide victory.
A look at the foreign vote from Paraguay in the last Brazilian election shows massive support for Mr. Bolsonaro. The former president won more than 90 percent of the vote in border towns of Salto del Guairá and Ciudad del Este (Paraguay’s second-largest city), as well as 74.4 percent in the capital, Asunción.
The claim for refugee status in Paraguay prevents Mr. Eustáquio from being arrested there, but inclusion on the Interpol list, if granted by the Feds, will prevent him from leaving the country, according to sealed court records obtained by The Brazilian Report. Should he leave Paraguay, he risks arrest by federal marshals in any country.
The blogger, however, seems unfazed by developments. In a WhatsApp conversation with The Brazilian Report, he mocked Brazil’s court system and claimed to have no fear of being arrested.
“My barber is in Brazil, I visit my family in Céu Azul (a city in the southern state Paraná) on a regular basis, and I’ve even been to Athletico Paranaense football games [in Curitiba]. I always eat at the Brazilian side of the border,” he says.
Trying to block access to the bank accounts of the far-right blogger has been a game of whac-a-mole for authorities. He once circumvented restrictions by using an account belonging to his daughter. Now, he moves cash through his mother’s accounts.
Mr. Eustáquio claims to have crossed the Brazil-Paraguay border — between the Brazilian city of Ponta Porã, and Paraguay’s Pedro Juan Caballero — with roughly BRL 300,000 (USD 62,600) in cash. To cross between the border cities, which are separated by nothing more than a street, he hid cash in his laptop case.
He didn’t declare these amounts to the Federal Revenue Service, as required by Brazilian law for amounts above USD 10,000. According to him, several trips were needed to take the bundles of cash to the neighboring country. “There’s an Itaú bank branch just six minutes from my Pedro Juan Caballero house,” he explains.
This week’s order by Justice Moraes shows that, even though Mr. Eustáquio has forged a workable loophole by asking for asylum in Paraguay, his avenues of evading justice are becoming increasingly narrower.
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