Suspects wanted to build luxury properties in an area that the councilor intended to allocate to poor families.
Marielle Franco, the Rio de Janeiro councilwoman murdered on March 14, 2018, was killed for disrupting the real estate speculation projects of Chiquinho and Domingos Brazão, two brothers from a powerful family linked to an armed militia, arrested on Sunday as the masterminds of the crime. The information, which led to the arrest of the brothers and also of the former Rio de Janeiro police chief Rivaldo Barbosa, for obstructing the investigations, was confirmed by the director of the Federal Police, Andrei Rodrigues.
Marielle’s influence with local leaders in the west zone of Rio, long dominated by the Brazão family, was hindering the expansion of the group’s illegal businesses and causing millionaire losses, which is why Domingos, advisor to the Court of Auditors, and Chiquinho , now a federal deputy but also a councilor at the time, decided to eliminate it, revealed Rodrigues.
The last straw was the opposition of the young left-wing councilor to a project presented by Chiquinho to legalize vast areas illegally occupied by his group and where they intended to build condominiums that would earn them millions, while Marielle intended to allocate the area to poor families. Domingos and Chiquinho will then have hired former police officer Ronnie Lessa, imprisoned since 2019 as Marielle’s confessed killer. It was his recent collaborative testimony, after five years in prison, that made it possible to clarify the deaths of Marielle and the driver, Anderson Gomes, and led to the arrest of those responsible.
