A Goulart Audit

In a way, it was unfair that President Joao ("Jango") Goulart was thrown out of Brazil. He owned so much more of it than anyone else. The latest count last week, on the basis of still incomplete returns, gave Leftist Jango title to at least 1,900,000 acres, or roughly .1% of the world's fifth largest nation.

One of Goulart's pet themes was sweeping agrarian reform. The man of the masses obviously meant every word he said about redistributing the land --but mainly to himself. Federal and state investigators have just started adding up the totals. When Goulart fled, he was believed on the verge of completing the biggest land deal in Brazilian rural history -- the acquisition of $1,385,000 worth of land in Mato Grosso state near the Bolivian border. What he already had latched onto, say the investigators, marked him as a wheeler-dealer without parallel.

Better from Rio. Goulart first became a landholder in 1943, when he inherited a 3,520-acre ranch in Rio Grande do Sul from his father. But his genius was not apparent until his great teacher, Getulio Vargas, returned to the presidency in 1951, and Jango went with him to Rio. Suddenly, Goulart found ranching and real estate highly profitable when practiced from the nation's capital. Items:

> In his home state of Rio Grande do Sul, Goulart's holdings grew until he now owns four ranches totaling 36,530 acres, stocked with 24,000 head of cattle, 20,000 sheep, 1,500 horses. He also reportedly owns several parcels of real estate in the Porto Alegre state capital, plus 25 rental houses in the town of Sao Borja.

> In Guanabara state, Goulart owns a $50,000 apartment overlooking Copacabana Beach, and a dairy farm outside Rio.

> In Goias state, he owns four more ranches. Total area: 494,200 acres.

> In Mato Grosso, Brazil's wild west, Goulart has 16 separate holdings, almost all bought within a single week, seven months after he became President in 1961. Twelve of the parcels are contiguous, forming one giant spread of 636,774 acres. Total Mato Grosso holdings: 1,371,983 acres. All of Goulart's ranches are well stocked with cattle and sheep.

Loans & Phantoms. The evidence coming out about Goulart's method of acquisition is no less remarkable. According to investigators, an employee of the Fundac,ao Brasil Central, a federal land colonization agency, cleared the way for Goulart's title to Cristalina ranch in Mato Grosso by convincing the former owners that their buildings would be burned to the ground unless they sold out at ridiculously low prices. The new government claims that Goulart got the 112,672-acre Fazenda Tres Marias, another of his Mato Grosso ranches, free in return for giving the owner an interest-free $150,000 loan from the Banco do Brasil.

Goulart himself borrowed heavily from the bank and never to anyone's knowledge repaid a cruzeiro; the new government is drawing up a list of the loans for possible use in justifying confiscation of his property. More than 500 phantom employees have been found on the payroll of Goulart's Planalto and Alvorada palaces in Brasilia--all hired by Jango. Government-paid employees worked on Goulart's ranches; the Brazilian air force built landing strips on them; the Fundac,ao Brasil Central pitched in on construction work.

A Satchel of Money. Goulart's real wealth may never be known. The investigators hesitate even to make an estimate. They do know that on the night of the revolution, several large canvas bags were loaded into the plane that flew him south from Brasilia. The contents of at least one of the bags was U.S. currency.

And what of the man himself? With his beautiful wife and two small children, Joao Goulart is in Uruguay, living in a small Montevideo hotel. Uruguay has granted him asylum, and he is reportedly looking for a permanent home. His far-leftist brother-in-law, Leonel Brizola, is still at large somewhere in southern Brazil, possibly on his own Fazenda Acegua, a sprawling sheep and cattle ranch straddling the Brazil-Uruguay border.

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