BRAZIL
Amazon mining boss wanted by Brazil for sheltering Jair Bolsonaro’s spy chief has businesses, properties in Florida
Bolsonaro’s son Flávio landed in Florida yesterday after he lost Brazil’s presidential election, claiming himself the legitimate winner.
A Brazilian gold miner wanted for allegedly helping former President Jair Bolsonaro’s spy chief flee to Florida has built a network of companies and properties in the Sunshine State, ICIJ media partner Agência Pública reports.
Rodrigo Martins de Mello and his family are under investigation by Brazil’s Federal Police for helping Alexandre Ramagem, the former director of the country’s intelligence agency, escape Brazil and sheltering him in Miami, ICIJ and Agência Pública reported on Oct. 22.
De Mello, known as Rodrigo Cataratas, is a strong Bolsonaro supporter. Convicted of leading illegal gold mining on Yanomami Indigenous land, De Mello champions Brazil’s informal miners to his more than 43,000 Instagram followers, attacks the leftist government and calls for amnesty for Bolsonaro, Agência Pública reported. That campaign suffered a blow Oct. 25, when President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva came from behind to defeat Bolsonaro’s son Flávio in the presidential runoff. Three days after the election, Flávio, under investigation in Brazil for alleged money laundering, also fled to Florida.
De Mello himself is now a fugitive. In an order previously under seal that became public this month, Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered his arrest for his alleged role in Ramagem’s escape in December 2025. On Oct. 19, the court rejected De Mello’s request to overturn the order, noting that police have been unable to locate him, the Brazilian news site Amado Mundo reported, and Agência Pública confirmed.
In Brazil, De Mello kept an active social media presence. He posted a photo in March 2025 welcoming Ramagem to Boa Vista, the capital of the Brazilian northern state of Roraima, where De Mello built his mining business.
But in recent months, his accounts have gone silent.
“He vanished off the map,” a former business partner in the United States told Agência Pública.
De Mello has been far more discreet about another aspect of his life: his businesses and properties in the U.S., a country he has frequented since the 1990s. He registered to vote in Florida in 1997, a step that requires attesting to U.S. citizenship, according to Miami-Dade County records obtained by ICIJ. An official from the Department of Elections told ICIJ that internal records show he has never voted, and his registration is inactive. Corporate records reviewed by ICIJ and Agência Pública link De Mello to at least three Florida companies since 1998 and to several addresses in the state since 1997, including a house with a pool in Boca Raton that he once co-owned.
One of the companies, X One Charters LLC, was founded in July 2023 and registered at the Sole Mia apartment where Ramagem would later stay. Founding documents list De Mello as its owner. A month after his arrest was ordered, in January 2026, he left the company, and Marcos Felix Ribeiro became its director. Yet the WhatsApp number on the company’s website is a phone number that belongs to De Mello, Agência Pública found. X One Charters rents out a yacht of the same name for cruises on Miami’s waters.
Ribeiro told Agência Pública that he had done business with De Mello in a mining venture in Guyana and that he received the yacht as payment for an excavator he left there, a trade worth about $100,000, the outlet reported.
A freight company also tied to the Sole Mia apartment lists as a director a pilot whom federal prosecutors accuse of flying for De Mello’s mining operation, according to Agência Pública. The pilot, who denied any business ties to De Mello, stayed in the Miami apartment months before Ramagem.
In August, De Mello was charged in a separate case with laundering more than 200 million reais, about $37 million, in gold and tin ore from Yanomami land between 2021 and 2023, Agência Pública reported. X One Charters was founded in July 2023, as the alleged scheme was underway.
De Mello did not respond to ICIJ and Agência Pública’s requests for comment.