In mid-September, a rumor emerged on social networks that a cutlery offered by Isabel II to Costa e Silva, former president of Brazil, disappeared from the official heritage when Lula da Silva left the presidency in 2011.
The accusations are not new and have been shared again after the death of Queen Elizabeth II on September 8. “Where did the cutlery go?”questions the post made on Facebook, which contains an image of the gold-plated cutlery.
When Brazilian authorities searched Lula da Silva’s home in 2016, they found evidence that valuables he received during his presidency were kept in a bank vault in São Paulo, Brazil. Jewelry, coins or pieces of art were found in the safe, but there are no reports of cutlery being found there, according to the newspaper Estadão.
Lula da Silva’s adviser confirmed to G1 that the allegations contained in the publications circulating on social networks are not true and explained that “all the removal of the former president’s personal collection was carried out by officials, in compliance with the law, and All this was later analyzed by Lava Jato, without finding any illegality.”
But the case does not end there. The cutlery not only did not disappear when Lula da Silva left the presidency, but they were never part of the official heritage of Brazil.
When Costa e Silva and Isabel II met on November 5, 1968, at the Palácio da Alvorada (Brasília), the monarch received gold balangandãs, a portrait of the then Brazilian president and a painting by Glauber Lima. In turn, the Queen offered Costa e Silva an oval silver cup and a centerpiece.
There is no evidence that Elizabeth II offered Costa e Silva gold cutlery. Contacted by G1, the secretary general of the Presidency of the Brazilian Republic said, in a statement, the following: “After a search carried out in the field of the Directorate of Engineering and Heritage of the Department of Special Administration, the responsible technical area, We declare that we have not found any information in the collection of the Presidency of the Republic about the cutlery or the collection of cutlery supposedly given by the Queen of England in 1968 to former President Costa e Silva”.
The image of the cutlery used in publications that disseminate, through social networks, a false message could be found on the website of Mozart Leilões, in Rio de Janeiro. The description of the product, which is no longer available on the auctioneer’s page, indicated, according to Estadão, that it was a Korean cutlery, without case, made of stainless steel and gold plated, sold in February 2013.
conclusion
It is not true that a cutlery offered by Isabel II to Costa e Silva disappeared from the official patrimony when Lula left the presidency. That’s because when Brazilian authorities searched a safe in Lula da Silva in 2016, they discovered jewelry, coins or pieces of art, but no gold-plated cutlery set.
But there’s more When Rainha and Costa e Silva met in Brasilia in 1968, they exchanged gifts. However, there is no evidence that Isabel II offered the then Brazilian president anything more than an oval silver cup and a centerpiece.
Thus, according to the Observer classification, this content is:
WRONG
In the Facebook classification system this content is:
FAKE: the main content claims are factually inaccurate. This option typically matches “false” or “mostly false” ratings on fact-checking websites.
NOTE: This content was curated by The Observer as part of a fact-checking partnership with Facebook.
Source: Observadora
