A Brazilian magistrate has dismissed the case for alleged irregular conduct against former president Jair Bolsonaro, currently under house arrest after being convicted to 27 years in prison for an attempted coup d'état, in relation to the hiring of his parliamentary adviser Walderice Santos da Conceição during his time as a federal deputy.
Judge Rodrigo de Godoy has chosen to dismiss the action for not finding evidence of illicit enrichment, damage to the public treasury, or wrongful intent, as the Federal Prosecutor's Office claimed, which still has the possibility of filing an appeal against this ruling.
In an order collected by the newspaper "O Globo", the magistrate concludes that the Public Prosecutor's Office failed to prove that Bolsonaro's former collaborator, popularly known as Wal do Açaí, stopped carrying out the tasks for which she was appointed in 2003.
The prosecution defended in its filing that the adviser was actually a "ghost employee", after detecting atypical financial movements in her bank account. For that reason, it sought payment of compensation of 280,000 reais (more than 45,600 euros), equivalent to the salaries received up to 2018, the date when she no longer worked for Bolsonaro's parliamentary office in the Chamber of Deputies.
The official lived in Angra dos Reis and, according to the version of the Prosecutor's Office, her appointment would have served to pay for the services that she and her husband carried out at Bolsonaro's vacation residence located in that city in the southwest of the state of Rio de Janeiro.