Plan B Forum

A New Zealand sportsman was forced into a car by armed police and made to withdraw the equivalent of $800 in Rio de Janeiro over the weekend, just 13 days before the Olympics are set to start in the city.

The police, who warned him not to report the incident and made efforts to avoid being seen, detained Jason Lee after pulling him off a highway into the city on Sunday.

After forcing him to drive the wrong way down the highway, they transferred him into an unmarked car, then took him to several ATMs to withdraw the money.

Lee, a 27-year-old jiu-jitsu national champion from Wellington, is not part of the Olympic delegation (jiu-jitsu is not an Olympic sport).

He has lived in Rio for about a year with his partner Laura McQuillan, who is a Fairfax journalist at Stuff.co.nz.

This was the worst of several bad Brazilian experiences, Lee said.

He was more scared for his life than he had ever been.

"I don't think I've ever felt like I could possibly die," Lee said.

The experience began with what appeared to be a routine police stop.

Lee was pulled over by two police on motorbikes, each armed with a pistol.

The police said they were carrying out a routine search for drugs and weapons.

"First he asked me stretch my arms, then patted me down. He grabbed my genital area, which was quite a surprise.

"At this point it still looked reasonably professional."

After a full search of his car and person, one of officers took his licence and the registration of his rented car away to his bike for a few minutes.

When he returned he was brandishing a large book, and told Lee he was breaking the law.

"He says, 'You can't drive in Brazil as a foreigner without a passport', which I now know isn't the case at all. The rental car company hadn't mentioned that to me."

"He starts opening the book, showing me all these passages in Portuguese, which I can sort of read like every third word.

The police demanded that Lee either paid them 2000 Brazilian real ($800) or they would arrest him and take him to the federal police.

Lee didn't have that much cash, so the police told him to follow them to an ATM.

But instead they forced him to drive down the wrong lane of a highway, pulling off beside a concrete police bunker underneath an overpass.

"These guys have pulled me over, they have weapons. I'm not in any position to negotiate," Lee said.

At this point he feared for his life.

At the bunker, Lee was forced to swap into an unmarked private car belonging to one of the officers.

When he asked why he couldn't drive his own car to the ATM, they explain that his car doesn't have tinted windows, but they are in full uniform and don't want to be seen.

"At this point I acknowledged to myself that I've completely backed myself into a corner."

Lee had been sending voice messages to his partner on WhatsApp, and dropped a GPS pin at the location of the bunker.

"Once I realised it was corrupt stuff that made me hesitant to go towards my phone - they knew what they were doing was wrong."

One of the officers and Lee drove to a nearby group of shops where he withdrew the money from several ATMs. The officer stayed in the car to avoid the security cameras, Lee said.

The pair returned to the bunker, Lee handed over the money, and was finally released.

One of the officers warned Lee against reporting the incident.

"He said 'You can't say anything to anyone about this, not a word.' "

Lee worried that drugs might have been planted in his car.

He immediately returned it and took an Uber taxi home, before reporting the incident to the tourist police that night.

"I was umming and ahhing about whether I should even make a complaint. One of the guys I was reporting it to said 'We understand you are hesitant, because we are the police, and that branch of the police is so scary even we are afraid of them'."

Lee said that in the year he has lived in Brazil, things have appeared to get worse, not better.

MGMcAnick wrote:My guess is that there will be other incidents of this nature during the games, and that the vast majority of them will go unreported.

Two laptops and team shirts were stolen from Australia's Olympic residence during a fire evacuation, it has been revealed.

The computers and shirts were stolen while rooms were vacant during a fire in the basement of the Australian building at the athletes' village on Friday.

Two laptops and team clothes were stolen from Australian athletes during a fire evacuation of the Olympic village in Rio on Friday. Vision: Seven News

"We did lose some shirts and a couple of laptops, one on the fifth floor from a cycling official and one in the office downstairs," Australian Olympic Committee spokesman Mike Tancred said.

The thefts are another headache for Australian hierarchy, who suspect the fire was caused by a cigarette tossed by a local worker into piles of rubbish in the basement.


About 100 team members were evacuated for about 30 minutes during the fire, which is when the thefts happened.

The fire alarms in the building had been deactivated without Australian officials being told and veteran shooter Warren Potent revealed he slept through the scare, not woken by door knocking or phone calls.

Rio de Janeiro (CNN)
The mother-in-law of Bernie Ecclestone, the head of Formula One auto racing, was freed Sunday after being kidnapped more than a week ago, authorities said. Aparecida Schunck Flosi Palmeira, 67, was being held in a house in the city of Cotia, Brazil, about 22 miles west of Sao Paulo, the Sao Paulo State public safety office said. A Facebook page that appears to be Schunck's says she lives in the southeastern Brazilian city.

Two people have been arrested, according to the anti-kidnapping unit of the city's police department. Images shown on TV Globo show Schunck arriving at a police station in Sao Paulo flanked by the police and amongst a media scrum.

"I ask that bandits stop kidnapping people in Sao Paulo because they will be arrested," she said. [Bet that'll stop 'em]

Ecclestone, the billionaire head of F1 racing, has been involved in motorsports for more than 50 years. He told CNN in 2012 that he plans to run F1 unitl he dies. The incident comes less than a week before the OIympics are set to start in Rio de Janeiro. Concerns about crime -- as well as the Zika virus, political corruption, economic woes and a doping scandal -- have many worried about whether Brazil is ready to host the Games.