The party animal in a gilded cage
The tale of how World Cup icon Ronaldinho, facing allegations of serious fraud and money laundering, ended up in jail...
RONALDINHO’S trademark grin had vanished. His long, curly hair tucked up under a black hat, a baggy white T-shirt covered the Brazilian’s slumped shoulders, as a police officer led him through the mass of flashing bulbs. A pink jumper wound around his wrists was all there was to hide the handcuffs.
One of the gnanest footballers in history, a World Cup winner in 2002, Balciald’Or winner in 2005, two-time FIFA footballer of the year in 2004 and ’05, who sits alongside Pele and Ronaldo, Zico and Garrincha in the pantheon of Brazil heroes… no longer a free man.
Ronaldinho spent 32 days, including his 40th birthday, inside a Paraguayan prison with his brother and agent Assis after the two were accused of entering the country with fake passports. If found guilty, they could face up to five years.
‘It is one of the most unbelievable things we have ever seen,’ Alex Sabino, reporter at Folha de Sao
Paulo told The Mail on Sunday.
‘I mean Ronaldinho, one of the greatest players in the history of Brazilian football, spent a month jailed in Paraguay!’
Not to mention that Brazilians do not even need a passport to cross the border. Imagine David Beckham being locked up for trying to get to Dublin with a forged passport.
Ronaldinho and his brother are now in house arrest after paying £1.3million bail. It’s far from over though. Prosecutors are still investigating whether he and his brother are part of a wider criminal network of crooked businessmen and public figures, forgery and money laundering, or whether they are just unwitting rooks in a much different game to the one Ronaldinho is used to playing.
‘The arrest was illegal and will soon be proved,’ Ronaldinho’s lawyer Sergio Queiroz told The Mail on Sunday.
It is yet another bizarre story in the remarkable life of Ronaldinho: of football and fame, partying and women, money and crime. And one that, whatever his lawyer says, raises more questions than answers.
The Brazilain icon is now staying in the £280-a-night presidential suite at the Palmaroga hotel in Asuncion, Paraguay’s capital. They have the place to themselves, too, thanks to coronavirus lockdown. Ronaldinho is making the most of a swimming pool and a whirlpool bath. The hotel even converted a ballroom into somewhere to allow him to practise his football.
‘He seems like a nice guy,’ hotel manager Emilio Yegros told Agence France-Press. ‘He always has a smile. His face has changed from his first day here. When he arrived he was tense and visibly stressed.’
He’s still partying, too. Last week, Ronaldinho beamed in live from the hotel on to a cinema screen at a concert of a Brazilian samba group. As the footballer blew kisses and put his hand to his heart a band member joked: ‘Here’s the man who’s even dribbled past coronavirus. We love you, we’re with you.’
Even when he was pictured in his jail cell, though, the smile was back on his face. The Brazilian stayed in a police barracks-turned-prison where high-profile inmates are kept. Ronaldinho received clothes, a fresh bed, ice cream and a TV. On March 11, he watched Atletico Madrid knock Liverpool out of the Champions League.
Ronaldinho was not confined to just watching football either.
He competed in a prison futsal tournament, scoring five goals and setting up six more in an 11-2 win for his team. The prize for the tournament winners? A 16kg pig.
Ronaldinho made friends there. Inmates cried when they found out he was to be released to house arrest and made him a go-away barbecue to say their goodbyes. Even in prison, Ronaldinho does it in style.
But how on earth did we get here? How did Ronaldinho go from being one of Barcelona’s finest No10s to spending his 40th birthday as inmate No194?
On March 4, Ronaldinho and his brother landed at Silvio Pettirossi International Airport in Paraguay. They went to a VIP room where they are alleged to have been met by businessman Wilmondes Sousa Lira and businesswoman Dalia Lopez. The brothers were handed their documents and proceeded to pass through security.
It was for Lopez’s children’s charity Fraternidade Angelical Foundation that Ronaldinho had come to appear on behalf of, as well as to promote his book Genius
of Life. They had been invited by Lopez’s friend, Nelson Belotti, whose Il Palazzo casino is located in the Yacht y Golf Club Paraguayo resort — in whose presidential suite the brothers were staying when they got raided by police.
The two passports had been issued two months earlier under the names of two Paraguyans. They now had the brothers’ names and faces on. At first, everyone thought Ronaldinho and Assis would face a fine and nothing more but, two days later, a judge ordered them to remain detained.
IT IS this that Ronaldinho’s lawyer believes to be unlawful, although other lawyers close to the case believe Ronaldinho had planned to leave Paraguay and posed a flight risk. Ronaldinho claims he and his brother had no idea they were fake and had been told they were an honorary gift. What it does not explain is why the pair used them to pass through security when they were only required to show their Brazilian ID cards.
‘That is the question no one can answer or one that no one is willing to answer,’ said one source. ‘There is no rational explanation,’ added the lawyer close to the case.
Sousa Lira has been arrested on suspicion of supplying the fake passports. He says that Lopez is responsible. A warrant is out for her arrest too but she is on the run.
The investigation is for something much bigger, as one source says, than ‘some counterfeit documents’. These are just one way that the criminal gang can launder money, and it is a network that is alleged to involve corrupt politicians, policemen, businessmen and civil servants. Lopez is alleged to have links to them all. Sixteen people have already been arrested.
What is Ronaldinho’s role in this? Osmar Legal, lead prosecutor in the case, told Reuters: ‘She (Lopez) could be involved in a money laundering scheme. That means we have to investigate all the other people related to that kind of crime, including Ronaldinho. That is why we maintain he be kept in jail.’
One reason they are believed to have been allowed into house arrest is because when the brothers’ phones were checked, there was no suspicious communication with Lopez.
Is Ronaldinho, though, the kind of person to unwittingly stumble into such a web?
‘To understand Ronaldinho, you have to understand that he and his brother act like one,’ says Sabino. ‘Ronaldinho plays football. His brother, who was a good footballer, does everything else. Ronaldinho is 100 per cent this kind of person. But his brother should not be this person. The brain should be Assis.’
Assis has been the patriarch since the traumatic death of their father, who drowned in the family swimming pool when Ronaldinho was eight. Assis controls the money, the business ventures, the rest.
Paolo Odone, former president of Gremio, Ronaldinho’s first club, has previously called Assis’s role in Ronaldinho’s life ‘abusive’. Assis himself was found guilty of money laundering in 2012.
Ronaldinho’s own institute, set up to help disadvantaged children, was twice investigated for alleged irregular contracts with Porto Alegre officials, though both times without prosecution. The Brazilian is also being investigated for his role in the cryptocurrency company 18kRonaldinho. Investors in the scheme have demanded millions in compensation after claims it was a pyramid scheme. Ronaldinho claims his image has been misused.
On top of that, he faced a £1.69m fine for unpaid taxes. Prosecutors at the time said an investigation into Ronaldinho’s account showed him to have only £5 in it. This is why eyebrows were raised when the £1.3m bail for their release from prison came from one of Ronaldinho’s personal accounts in Europe.
For now, Ronaldinho and his brother remain under house arrest. Prosecutors have until September 6 to investigate and could even ask for another six-month extension. If enough evidence is found, they could go to trial. For what they are accused, the maximum sentence is five years.
For a man who spent so long on top of the world, it is no wonder that his smile, if only for a moment, began to fade away.