Cocaine bust on Brazilian plane and looming typhoon add more drama to already tense G-20 summit

July 09, 2024

OSAKA, Japan — The Group of 20 summit in Japan was already expected to be high on intensity and drama.

And that was before a cocaine bust and the approach of huge storm that was barreling toward the venue.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro promised an “immediate investigation and severe punishment for the person responsible” for attempting to bring nearly 40 kilograms of cocaine on one of his government’s planes headed to Osaka for the summit. There appears to be little precedent for such a drug bust on a government jet ahead of one of these summits.

On Tuesday afternoon, Spanish police arrested a member of the Brazilian air force, who was on the advance team for Bolsonaro’s trip to Japan to attend the summit, during a refueling stop in the southern Spanish city of Seville. Spanish customs officials found 37 packets of cocaine, weighing 86 pounds.

“Although it was unrelated to my team,” the episode in Spain was “unacceptable,” Bolsonaro wrote on Twitter. “I demanded immediate investigation and severe punishment for the person responsible for the narcotic material found on the [Brazilian air force] plane. We will not tolerate [this] disrespect to our country!”

Bolsonaro, a new populist leader, is working to solidify his international credentials at the summit and is scheduled to meet with President Trump on Friday afternoon. He is known for provocative statements and has tried to establish himself as a hawk on crime and the military. He has spoken in support of torture and other actions by the police and military in an effort to crack down on crime and graft.

The former military officer soared into the presidential palace in January on the promise that he would be different. He vowed to restore order and comport himself with the sort of integrity and ethics that he said had gone missing in a country roiled by corruption scandals and escalating violence.

Now he’s trying to reconcile his puritanical rhetoric with all that cocaine.

Brazilian media reports have identified the arrested airman as 38-year-old Sgt. Silva Rodrigues. Spanish authorities have charged him with drug trafficking.

The arrest was an embarrassment on the world stage for Bolsonaro, who this month supported a new drug policy that imposed stricter penalties for drug traffickers, including lengthier prison sentences and involuntary rehabilitation.

Speaking with reporters in Brasilia on Wednesday, Brazilian Vice President Hamilton Mourao described the airman as a “qualified drug mule."

“It’s obvious that, given the amount of drugs he had on him, that he didn’t just buy them around the corner and take them with him,” CNN quoted Mourao as saying. “He was working as a qualified drug mule, let’s put it that way."

Bolsonaro has ordered his Defense Ministry to cooperate “immediately” with Spanish authorities, promising that if Rodrigues was involved in the crime, he would be “judged and convicted."

The G-20 is an annual gathering of world leaders, who often discuss tense subjects such as trade, climate change and poverty. Trump has promised to confront a number of world leaders on economic policy, and some European leaders have promised to push back.

But they better have brought umbrellas. That’s because a tropical cyclone was moving toward Osaka and was expected to make landfall late Thursday and continue into Friday. The cyclone is expected to eventually grow in strength until it becomes a powerful typhoon, according to the Japan Times.

McCoy reported from Sao Paulo, Brazil.

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