02/08/2024 – 21:51
The great offensive of the Federal Police (PF) this Thursday, 8th, which affects the most important allies of Jair Bolsonaro (PL), including high-ranking military personnel – such as General Paulo Sérgio Nogueira de Oliveira, former commander of the Army, and the admiral Almir Garnier Santos, former commander of the Navy – indicates that the former president could be arrested on charges of direct involvement in an alleged coup plot to remain in power.
Investigators believe that this possibility could be strengthened based on new evidence collected by federal agents from Operation Tempus Veritatis during searches targeting members of Bolsonaro's restricted circle of friends. In today's action, by order of Minister Alexandre de Moraes, of the Federal Supreme Court (STF), the former president has already been asked to hand over his passport and banned from having contact with other people being investigated.
Lawyer Fábio Wajngarten, former head of the Social Communication Secretariat of Jair Bolsonaro's government, who is now defending the former president, did not comment on the content of the police allegations, but stated that Bolsonaro complied with the decision to hand over his passport.
The PF's movements suggest that a possible arrest decree for the former president is close. In his decision, including authorizing the arrest of Filipe Martins and Marcelo Câmara, former advisors who played a role of absolute trust for Bolsonaro, the STF minister highlights several passages that place the former president as the architect of the plan to “turn the tables” , as suggested by General Augusto Heleno, then chief minister of the Institutional Security Office (GSI).
The most conclusive evidence against the former president was found on the cell phone of Lieutenant Colonel Mauro Cid, his former assistant, who closed a plea bargain. Messages exchanged by Cid with General Marco Antônio Freire Gomes, then Army commander, in December 2022, suggest that Bolsonaro edited the text of a draft coup decree to annul the results of the elections and arrest Moraes.
“(Bolsonaro) made a much more concise decree”, says the aide-de-camp. “Something much more direct, objective and short, and limited.”
The PF also found, on a computer seized from Mauro Cid, a recording of a meeting between Bolsonaro, his ministers and assistants, in July 2022, in which the president calls for initiatives to discredit the polls.
“From now on I want every minister to say what I’m going to say here, and I’m going to show it. If the minister doesn't want to talk, he will come (sic) to talk to me because he doesn't want to talk. If you show me where I'm wrong, I'll take it. Now, if there's no argument to dissuade me from what I'm going to show, I won't want to talk to this minister. It’s in the wrong place”, says the transcript attributed to Bolsonaro.
Moraes states that the statement proves that Bolsonaro demanded from ministers, “in a total deviation from the purpose of the functions of the position”, the promotion of “misinformation and fraudulent news regarding the fairness of the voting system, using the structure of the Brazilian State for illicit purposes and dissociated from the public interest.”
Preventive detention is a type of procedural detention, that is, decreed before a possible accusation or conviction. It can only be imposed in exceptional situations. The hypotheses are provided for in article 312 of the Penal Code.
The first of these is the need to guarantee public order, that is, when the person being investigated poses a social risk. Preventive detention is also provided for to preserve criminal investigation when there is evidence of an attempt to obstruct the investigation or coerce witnesses, for example. It can also be imposed when there is proof of the existence of the crime and sufficient evidence of authorship.
Another requirement is contemporaneity, that is, whether the suspicions under investigation are recent or not. At this point, the clandestine monitoring of Minister Alexandre de Moraes weighs against those being investigated, which according to the Federal Police could still be ongoing. “There is no guarantee of effective interruption”, highlighted the minister himself in the order that authorized the operation.
The PF already refers to those being investigated, including Bolsonaro, as a “criminal organization” and describes the centers of activity, which the police believe would be carrying out the orders of the former president.
It is not the first PF investigation that closes the siege on Bolsonaro. The former president is cornered by other investigations and had already been the target of searches for suspected fraud in Covid-19 vaccination certificates.
For lawyer Jacqueline Valles, master in Criminal Law, the seizure of Bolsonaro's passport minimizes the risk of escape and, in this sense, makes the possibility of Moraes decreeing the former president's preventive detention more distant.
“Eliminating the possibility of escape, the only reason that could lead to preventive detention would be if he started to disrupt the progress of the process, threaten witnesses or disobey court orders”, argues the expert.
See other operations targeting Bolsonaro:
– Digital militias;
– Fraud in Covid-19 vaccination cards;
– Saudi jewelry;
– Coup acts on January 8th;
– Interference in the Federal Police;
– Attack on electronic voting machines.
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