ASUNCION ā Former soccer star Ronaldinho and his brother were taken in handcuffs to a courthouse in Paraguay on Saturday following their arrest for allegedly entering the country with falsified documents.
Prosecutors are seeking to extend the detention of 39-year-old Ronaldinho and brother Roberto Assis, while defense lawyer SĆ©rgio Queiroz says they should be freed because they are not a threat or flight risk.
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The Brazilian brothers were arrested Friday night in a hotel in AsunciĆ³n, Paraguay's capital, and accused of using false Paraguayan ID documents.
Queiroz had said Ronaldinho, the 2002 World Cup winner and former Barcelona star, was preparing to take a flight back to Rio de Janeiro, where he lives, shortly before the arrests.
Ronaldinho and Assis had said they went to AsunciĆ³n for business reasons.
The former footballer and his brother said the documents were offered as a gift by a Brazilian businessman, Wilmondes Sousa Liria, who has been jailed.
Ronaldinho's passport was seized in November 2018 because of a lawsuit over alleged environmental crimes. Authorities said the former Barcelona star did not have the necessary environmental license to build a fishing platform on the shores of the Guaiba river in his hometown of Porto Alegre. With unpaid damages of $2.1 million, Ronaldinho's passport was seized, along with that of his brother, to prevent him from traveling.
In September of last year, however, the star reached a deal with prosecutors and got his documents back. It was not immediately clear why he and his brother did not use their Brazilian documents for the trip to Paraguay.