He is the greatest player to ever hail from Brazil’s southern state of Rio Grande do
Sul. He is arguably the most talented dribbler to emerge from the land where so many seem
to be born with a ball at their feet. But for Ronaldinho Gaúcho – Champions League
winner, World Cup winner, two-time FIFA World Player of the Year – an attempt to evade
Paraguayan justice appears to have proven extremely costly. The former Barcelona and
Brazil idol was arrested on Friday, 6 March, for entering the South American nation on
a doctored Paraguayan passport, alongside his brother and agent, Roberto de Assis.
The numbers on the passports used by both men were found to belong to two elderly Paraguayan
citizens. The siblings subsequently presented themselves at a police station to give formal
statements on the morning of the 5 March leading to the surreal situation of Ronaldinho happily
posing for photos with police staff just a few hours prior to his arrest.
Now, he could be set to face far more grave charges, including money laundering, while
his commercial relationship with millionairess Dalia Lopez is fully investigated by Paraguay’s
Organised Crime and Money Laundering Unit. Since the player’s arrest, Lopez has proved
impossible to track down. On the 10th March, the Assis brothers saw
their request to be placed under house arrest for the duration of the investigation denied.
There is a fear from the prosecutor’s office that the two men will use the opportunity
to flee back to their homeland, thereby allowing them to escape any potential punishment.
Brazil has a policy of not extraditing its citizens under any circumstances.
The two therefore remain in a maximum security prison in the Paraguayan capital of Asuncion
while the remainder of the investigation is carried out, on the charge of using doctored
documentation to enter the country. Ronaldinho’s defence team has called the
measure excessive and plans to file an appeal against the court’s decision.
Arrested with the pair was Brazilian businessman Wilmondes Souza Lira, an alleged close friend
of Roberto. He is suspected of supplying the two with the false passports and travelled
with them to Paraguay last week. This episode is the latest in an increasingly
long list of misdemeanours involving the former Barcelona and Brazil no.10, in a behavioural
pattern which threatens to erode the memory of his playing achievements
The last time we saw anything resembling Ronaldinho the footballer came back in July 2013, when
he added the Copa Libertadores crown to his already heaving trophy cabinet.
In 2014, when he was on the look-out for a new club, a photo was leaked of him at a private
party. Standing in a swimming pool, arms spread wide and that famous smile stretching from
cheek to cheek, five thong-clad women lay at his feet.
2015 saw him make a return to Brazil following a spell in Mexico, signing a short-term contract
with Rio de Janeiro club Fluminense. Yet he lasted less than two months and just nine
appearances before tearing up his contract and walking away from professional football
for good. More recently, the former player is also being
investigated for fraud by Brazilian Federal Prosecutors for his suspected part in a Ponzi
scheme. The founder of 18K Ronaldinho, Marcelo Lara, is also currently under investigation,
with the player claiming that Lara used his images without permission to promote his business
interests. Prosecutors are in the process of examining
consumer complaints against 18K Ronaldinho. The player, through his legal team, has made
threats to sue the company if his images are not removed from their website. However, a
quick site visit shows that photos of the player still adorn the pages of Lara’s trading
company. Additionally, this is not the first time a
Brazilian athlete has been caught travelling on a false passport. A report from February
2001 in Brazil’s Folha de São Paulo – the country’s most reputable newspaper – explained
that four European countries: France, Spain, Italy and England, had opened investigations
into falsely documented athletes. The most renowned case involved former Uruguayan
attacker Alvaro Recoba. The player was caught with false documents and was forced to return
to Uruguay and request a work visa at the Italian embassy in Montevideo to save his
job with Inter Milan. A more serious incident involved Brazilian
players Warley and Alberto, both of Udinese at the time. The pair were arrested for travelling
on false passports during a trip to Poland for a UEFA Cup tie with their club but, just
like Recoba, did not end up serving any jail time for their mishaps.
Both Warley and Alberto had Uruguayan Juan Figer as their agent, who also represented
Brazilian midfielder Edu. The player’s transfer from Corinthians to Arsenal fell through in
2000 when it was revealed the Portuguese passport he carried had not been signed by an official.
And it is the passport angle which is one of the initially odder aspects of this whole
tale involving Ronaldinho. As a Brazilian citizen, the 39-year-old did not even need
a passport for this trip. He travelled from São Paulo to Asuncion, and would only have
needed to present his RG, his Brazilian ID card, upon arrival in the Paraguayan capital.
So far, neither Ronaldinho nor his brother has been able to offer a suitable explanation
as to why they were travelling on Paraguayan documentation in the first place. They are
however said to have been provided by Dalia Lopez, responsible for organising the trip
to Paraguay so that the former athlete could take part in four charity events for her “Angelic
Fraternity” foundation, as well as visit the Il Palazzo casino, of which he is an ambassador.
Lawyers representing Ms Lopez, as well as her foundation, have denied any wrongdoing,
while all events were cancelled in the light of the star attraction’s arrest.
Ronaldinho’s Brazilian passport issues began when his travel document was officially confiscated
in early 2019 when he failed to pay a fine of US$2.75 million for environmental damages
caused in his home state of Rio Grande do Sul. The former football player had erected
a pier on Lake Guíaba in 2015, an area classed as in “permanent preservation”.
Ronaldinho’s failure to pay the fine resulted in the confiscation of his passport, an ironic
punishment for a man made an ambassador for tourism by Brazil president Jair Bolsonaro
in September 2019. On 7 March, Embratur, Brazil’s national tourism body, declared that they
intended to retain Ronaldinho on as an ambassador despite these latest developments.
For Ronaldinho and his continued adoring public, there appear to still be more questions than
answers. Like any excellent mystery, this developing story has contained twists, a cast
of unsavoury characters and a tale that has grabbed attention around the world.
Most recently, it was revealed that the former Ballon d’Or winner had scored five goals
in his first game in a prison tournament. Completing his journey from the Champions
League, to a competition in which the winners – reportedly – will win a 35lb cooked
pig. It was once thought that the buck-toothed,
fleet footed player, renowned for his artistry and winning smile, would always be remembered
fondly for what he contributed to the game in the early years of this century. But in
the years since his retirement, winding down since that final Libertadores triumph almost
seven years ago, the player looks to be in very real danger of destroying his glorious
legacy.