Forum: Who are Alan and Alex, Flávio Bolsonaro's 'top-notch' police officers?
A report by Fórum describes who the brothers are who appear in the photo taken in October 2017 and posted on Flávio Bolsonaro's Instagram with the caption "Congratulations Alan and Alex on your birthday, this family is top-notch!!!"; both had their preventive detention ordered, targets of Operation Fourth Element, launched in August 2018.
By Rogério Jordão, from Rio de Janeiro, special for Fórum - "Police officers arrested in Rio operation participated in Bolsonaro's son's campaign." With this headline, the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo, on September 5, 2018, presented the photo that opens this text. Taken from Flávio Bolsonaro's Instagram, published with the caption "Congratulations Alan and Alex on your birthday, this family is top-notch!!!", Estadão was the only newspaper to report, during the election campaign, the arrest of military police officers Alan and Alex Rodrigues de Oliveira, wearing striped shirts in the image.
The twins, who were 47 years old at the time the photo was taken in October 2017, are brothers of the treasurer of the PSL party in Rio, Valdenice de Oliveira Meliga, who also appears in the image alongside Flávio and the then federal deputy and current president Jair Bolsonaro. According to the report in the São Paulo newspaper, the police officers participated, until their arrest, in activities related to Flávio's Senate campaign in the West Zone. In that region, and according to a complaint from the Rio de Janeiro State Public Prosecutor's Office (see below), both maintained an illegal land subdivision in the Paciência neighborhood, which was the target of two police operations in 2018. One in January, just three months after the "highlight" photo, and the other in April, at the beginning of the election campaign.