Update - 11.25am: Inspector Ricardo Barbosa told a press conference in Rio that they were offering tickets for more than four times the original price.

One four-year cycle down and another one begins.

Even the pouring rain couldn’t put a damper on Brazil's famed Rio de Janeiro carnival as tens of thousands of revellers took to the streets, dancing to the sound of samba drums on the second day of the annual celebration.

Brazil’s best-known monument, the Christ the Redeemer statue, overlooking Rio, is at the centre of a legal dispute over who owns the rights to its image on tens of thousands of souvenirs.