The Brazilian Federal Police filed charges against former President Jair Bolsonaro for fraud in the Covid-19 vaccination certificate, a case that reveals the possible existence of a criminal association that would have benefited military personnel, politicians and individuals close to the leader of the extreme right, today disqualified until 2030 for abuse of political and economic power.
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The authorities see signs of association to commit a crime and use of false data within the case that investigates an illicit network in which the military, advisors, politicians and doctors allegedly participated to falsify vaccination cards and that allegedly benefited Jair Bolsonaro and his closest entourage.
According to the investigation, there was a plot set up to falsify anti-covid vaccination cards with the aim that its beneficiaries could skip health restrictions in third countries during the pandemic.
The Police also pointed out in their final report Bolsonaro's former aide-de-camp, Lieutenant Colonel Mauro Cidand the federal deputy Gutenberg Reisfrom the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB) party.
URGENT: In depoimento na PF, Mauro Cid confirmed that the former president Jair Bolsonaro “deu a order” to make the false Covid vaccination cards for his file, Laura. The former assistant of Orders delivered the document in more to Bolsonaro. @DanielaLima_ trace the details.… pic.twitter.com/ISRozrehJa
— GloboNews (@GloboNews) March 19, 2024
Now it will be the Prosecutor's Office that will analyze the Police's conclusions and decide whether or not to present a formal complaint before Justice against Bolsonaro, who is being investigated in other processes, including for the attempted coup d'état after the 2022 elections, which the current ruler, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, won.
Read alsoFormer military commanders accuse Bolsonaro of having proposed a coup d'état
Fábio Wajngarten, spokesperson and one of the far-right leader's lawyers, criticized on his social networks “the leak” to the media of the opinion of the Federal Police.
“It is regrettable when the authorities use the press to communicate a formal actor that logically should have a technical and procedural covering and not a media and partial one,” he said.
The shadows on Bolsonaro's vaccination certificate
In May 2023, the Police searched Bolsonaro's house in Brasilia as part of this case and then arrested six suspects, including Mauro Cid, two of his bodyguards and a soldier who acted as an advisor to the former head of state.
In the course of the proceedings, the authorities detected “the existence of indications of insertion of false data about the Covid-19 vaccine” in relation to the then Brazilian president, who governed between 2019 and 2022.
In official records it was stated that Bolsonaro, who always disdained the impact of Covid-19 and raised doubts about the effectiveness of vaccinesreceived two doses in an outpatient clinic, but There is no evidence that he was there on the designated days.
Those records were later deleted under the claim that they were an “error.” The same thing happened on different dates with the former president's daughter Laura, 13 years old.
Their allegedly false vaccination details were uploaded and then deleted, in theory, “to eliminate traces” of possible “criminal behavior,” according to the Police.
The investigation indicates that the former president had “full knowledge” of the “fraudulent insertion of vaccination data”, remaining “inert” in the face of such crime.
Bolsonaro traveled in December 2022, on the eve of Lula's inauguration, which took place on January 1, 2023, to the United States, where at that time it was mandatory to present an anti-Covid vaccination certificate, a measure that was in force until May of last year. .
The former president spent three months in the US until his return to Brazil and since then his problems with Justice have multiplied.
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