This article is a collaboration between Mother Jones and Agência Pública.
On July 16, Paulo Figueiredo, a Brazilian right-wing influencer and grandson of a former military dictator, stood in front of the White House. At his side was Eduardo Bolsonaro, son of Jair Bolsonaro, the Brazilian ex-president who is on trial for an alleged coup attempt. The two scions had just had “a very important round of meetings” with high-level US government officials, Eduardo said in a video posted online. They wanted to share with their followers what might happen next.
In early July, President Donald Trump announced a 50 percent tariff on imports from Brazil to the United States. Trump explained it as, in part, a rebuttal of what he decried as a “witch hunt” against Jair Bolsonaro and the “insidious attacks” on free speech by Brazilian authorities probing a 2022 plot to keep the defeated president in power. In the video, Figueiredo, a self-proclaimed journalist in exile based in Florida, said the tariffs marked the “beginning of a journey that could be dire for Brazil.”
For months, Eduardo and Figueiredo have been spearheading an international campaign to lobby the United States to impose sanctions. In particular, the pair is targeting Alexandre de Moraes, the Brazilian Supreme Court justice overseeing the investigation into Jair Bolsonaro’s alleged role in the failed coup. They accuse Moraes, who has forcefully cracked down on social media platforms over the spread of disinformation, of being a “de facto dictator” censoring conservative voices in Brazil. A couple of days after their reported White House talks, Secretary of State Marco Rubio ordered the revocation of US visas for Moraes, his allies, and family members. Figueiredo would also later welcome the tariffs as “the right move”—in line with the pair’s push to punish Moraes, who has now been formally sanctioned in the US.
Figueiredo is a key articulator of the Brazilian far right’s agenda in the United States, which includes a call for amnesty for the former president—barred from running for office until 2030—as well as his jailed supporters involved in the violent January 8, 2023, riots and others perceived as having been politically persecuted. But as Figueiredo’s sphere of influence in Washington appears to grow, he’s also drawing more scrutiny. Brazil’s Agência Pública and Mother Jones found that his company in Florida has been cited as a defendant in one of hundreds of complaints filed in a federal bankruptcy case seeking recovery of transfers allegedly made as part of a sprawling fraud scheme led by the Chinese tycoon Guo Wengui.
Guo, who was arrested in March 2023, has been convicted of nine criminal counts, including money laundering and racketeering. Self-exiled in the United States since 2015, Guo—also known as Miles Guo, Ho Wan Kwok, and Miles Kwok—had business dealings with Trump’s former strategist Steve Bannon, who is close to the Bolsonaro family. The Chinese tycoon was also an investor in and reportedly controlled the platform Gettr, which sponsored events supporting Jair Bolsonaro’s 2022 reelection bid.
Guo gained notoriety as a self-styled critic of the Chinese Communist Party and supporter of the US far right, helping spread conspiracy theories about the origins of Covid. He paid Bannon at least $1 million in consulting fees related to his network of media ventures and organizations, which included a group they co-founded to serve as a supposed parallel government outside of China. As Mother Jones previously reported, Guo was accused of deceiving thousands of online followers into investing in businesses under his control and diverting more than $1 billion to fund his lavish lifestyle.
The adversary proceeding complaint against Figueiredo’s company International Treasure Group—registered in Florida since 2017—claims that a transfer of $140,000 to the business was fraudulent. Public court records filed in February 2024 in the US Bankruptcy Court for the District of Connecticut indicate the alleged transaction came from a shell company owned by Guo, HCHK Technologies Inc.
“This transfer was actually fraudulent, because the Debtor effectuated it as part of his ‘shell game,’ and it was made with the intent to hinder, delay, and/or defraud the Debtor’s creditors,” the complaint states. The 15-page document does not include information on the exact date or nature of the transaction, but according to the records, it took place sometime before February 15, 2022, when Guo filed for bankruptcy. (The filing does not allege wrongdoing by the recipient of the funds.)
Although he owned a $37 million yacht, lived in a $67 million penthouse overlooking New York’s Central Park, and was widely reported to be a billionaire, Guo claimed in court that he had “insufficient assets to pay his liabilities and that his luxurious lifestyle is funded by his family.” He declared only $3,850 in assets but was accused of operating shell companies to conceal his wealth and file for bankruptcy. Court records state he used these firms “as personal piggy-banks, funding the lavish lifestyle to which he and his family had become accustomed.” In March 2023, Guo was charged with 12 criminal counts, including money laundering, racketeering, wire fraud, and securities fraud. He was convicted in July 2024 of nine of them.
His web of “labyrinthine finances,” as characterized in a bankruptcy court filing, moved funds through about 500 accounts held by at least 80 entities or individuals, including HCHK Technologies, the company through which the transaction to Figueiredo’s firm was allegedly made. The complaint against the International Treasure Group seeks to recover the transferred amount. Figueiredo received a notice of the complaint but failed to respond by the deadline, resulting in an entry of default against the company. As of the date of publication, the proceedings were moving forward through the appointment of a mediator.
A former senior Gettr official, speaking under condition of anonymity, told Agência Pública and Mother Jones that Figueiredo was involved in the initial efforts to launch the social network globally. His role at the company took place “in the early days, before Gettr’s corporate documentation was finalized.” The source said that “mutual friends brought” Figueiredo to Gettr and that he worked “helping to recruit social media influencers to join the platform” after its launch. Gettr previously acknowledged to Mother Jones paying right-wing figures to use the website.
Figueiredo didn’t address a list of questions about the complaint or his alleged connection to Gettr. In an email, he called the questions “bullshit” and threatened: “I know how to deal with people like that.”
The US trustee in Guo’s bankruptcy case also sought to recover payments allegedly made to Gettr and two of Bannon’s companies, Warroom Broadcasting & Media Communications LLC and Bannon Strategic Advisors. Reached for comment about the complaints, Bannon said: “It’s standard bankruptcy proceeding—been going on for years—and all the leftwing media in Brazil like yourself working for Lula [Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva] can go fuck yourself.” (Bannon continued: “Ask Lula how it feels to be crushed by President Trump. LOL.”)
One complaint reviewed by Agência Pública and Mother Jones states that HCHK Technologies and another shell company allegedly controlled by the Chinese billionaire, Lexington Property and Staffing Inc., “transferred funds in the amount of $353,000” to Jason Miller, a former Trump adviser and ex-CEO of Gettr. In a response filed in bankruptcy court in May, Miller argued that there was no connection between Guo’s “crimes and the transfers at issue.”
The MAGA-friendly social media network, which arrived in Brazil in July 2021, has served as a space for the spread of misinformation aligned with the pro-Bolsonaro movement and has come on the radar of the Brazilian federal police in a “digital militias” inquiry into the existence of a criminal organization operating online against Brazilian democratic institutions. (Elon Musk, the owner of X, was also included in the investigation.)
Days after launching Gettr in the United States, Miller, then the social network’s CEO, announced the company’s interest in entering the Brazilian market. “Brazil will be a major market for Gettr,” he celebrated on his profile on the platform on July 6, 2021. In 2022, an election year in Brazil, the “Gettr Brasil Oficial” profile boosted the image of Jair Bolsonaro, who was then the incumbent president running for reelection. The account covered the president’s weekly live broadcasts, advertised his schedule, shared announcements from the government’s communications department, and hosted livestreams with supporters of the president.
Miller visited Brazil at least three times between 2021 and 2022 and took part in a pro-Bolsonaro rally in Rio de Janeiro ahead of the presidential elections in September 2022. During one visit to the country to attend the Conservative Political Action Conference, Miller was briefly questioned by Brazilian authorities investigating fake news and anti-democratic acts. On a recent podcast appearance, Eduardo Bolsonaro credited Miller, who has called Moraes the “single greatest threat to democracy in the Western Hemisphere,” with helping “draw President Trump’s attention to what’s happening in Brazil.”
The grandson of João Figueiredo, the last president of Brazil’s 21-year military dictatorship, Paulo Figueiredo is among 34 people indicted by the attorney general’s office in connection with the investigation into the attempted coup. A former commentator on a right-wing radio station, he allegedly used his influence to “pressure” members of the military to support the efforts that led to the January 6-like attack on Brazil’s capital. Figueiredo’s case has yet to be reviewed by the Supreme Court.
As Agência Pública reported, Eduardo Bolsonaro sees Figueiredo as the “brain” behind his international maneuvers. The Brazilian congressman took a leave of absence and relocated to Texas earlier this year to dedicate himself full time to convincing the Trump administration to defend Jair Bolsonaro and impose sanctions on Moraes and the Brazilian government. “I will stay and work harder than ever,” Eduardo said in a March video. “Alexandre, my life goal will be to make you pay for all your cruelty toward innocent people. I will be fully focused on this objective and will only return when you have been properly punished for your crimes and your abuse of authority.”
In July, after the announcement of the US tariffs on Brazil, the former president’s son and Figueiredo boasted of their “intense dialogue” with Trump administration officials, saying it “confirms the success in conveying what we have been presenting with seriousness and responsibility.” The measure, they said, aims to make Brazil’s “political, business, and institutional establishment,” which they claim is complicit with Moraes’ “authoritarian escalation,” bear the “cost of this adventure.” (When Agência Pública revealed in April 2024 that Eduardo and a delegation of Brazilian lawmakers were lobbying for sanctions against Brazil in the United States, the congressman recorded a video denying the information. “Our intention is to bring the truth abroad,” he said.)
Figueiredo has been known within Trump’s circle since 2013, when he partnered with the real estate businessman to build a Trump Hotel in Rio de Janeiro. The dictator’s grandson, whose Facebook profile displays a photo with the US president, has said he met Trump at one of his golf courses in Florida.
In 2016, the Trump Organization pulled out of the project before construction was completed and just weeks after an investigation into the hotel development was launched. The Trump Hotel, as initially conceived, never came to be. Operating under the name Lifestyle Laghetto Collection, the beachfront hotel continues to function normally in a high-end neighborhood of the city.
As of May 2025, the development owed 15 million Brazilian reais (about $2.7 million) in property taxes to the Rio de Janeiro city government but has not paid, claiming it has been under judicial recovery since 2019. The legal action to collect the debt is ongoing in the courts. The Polo Special Situations investment fund, which loaned money to the enterprise in 2016 in the form of debentures, is seeking repayment from Figueiredo, as well as eight other individuals and 18 legal entities.
Figueiredo served as CEO of Polaris Projetos e Empreendimentos, a firm that provided consulting services for the hotel’s construction, in addition to being a former partner at LSH Barra Empreendimentos Imobiliários SA, the hotel’s developer. In 2019, Figueiredo was arrested in the United States as part of Operation Circus Maximus, a Brazilian federal police investigation into an alleged bribery scheme involving current and former executives of BRB, the state bank of Brasília, in exchange for investments in several projects, including the construction of the former Trump Hotel.
Residing in the United States since 2016, Figueiredo has participated in two US House of Representatives hearings. In May 2024, appearing before a Foreign Affairs subcommittee, he reiterated calls for sanctions and refused to say whether he repudiated the period of 1979 to 1985, during which his grandfather served as one of the presidents of Brazil’s military dictatorship.
Speaking with Mother Jones in June 2025, Figueiredo described the hearing as a “turning point” in his yearslong campaign to inform US public opinion and lawmakers about the context in Brazil, or what he calls the deterioration of a “consolidated democracy.” This work, according to Figueiredo, began after the 2022 Brazilian elections and has involved appearances on popular US podcasts and in right-wing media outlets.
He also said he has had meetings with at least 40 Congress members, including discussions about bills to pressure Brazilian authorities. He claimed that it was the actions of Moraes—who Figueiredo said canceled his passport and froze his assets in Brazil—that got him “out of his comfort zone” and motivated him to engage in this advocacy. Figueiredo now considers what he called the initial “awareness” phase to be complete. Trump’s return to the White House, he said, made it possible to begin the “implementation” phase, with the ultimate goal of securing financial sanctions against Moraes.
In June, in testimony before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, Figueiredo again urged the swift adoption of sanctions against the Supreme Court justice under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act. The law, signed by former President Barack Obama in 2016, has been used to impose sanctions on terrorist groups, individuals involved in corruption schemes, and those accused of human rights violations.
His call hasn’t gone unanswered. On July 18, Moraes and seven other Brazilian Supreme Court justices had their US visas suspended. On July 30, the Treasury Department sanctioned Moraes, invoking the Magnitsky Act. “De Moraes is responsible for an oppressive campaign of censorship, arbitrary detentions that violate human rights, and politicized prosecutions—including against former President Jair Bolsonaro,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement. Eduardo and Figueiredo celebrated the sanction as “mission accomplished.”
Figueiredo sees the pro-Bolsonaro movement’s efforts in the United States as a way to strengthen the group’s power in Brazil. “I would say that if Bolsonaro had done the international work we’re doing now—if he had valued it, and he didn’t—he wouldn’t have left office, he wouldn’t have. [Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva] wouldn’t have come to power,” he said during a livestream in early 2024.
Dan Friedman contributed reporting.
