BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) — Brazil’s federal police raided the home of former President Jair Bolsonaro on Wednesday and confiscated his phone as part of what they said is an investigation into the alleged falsification of COVID-19 vaccine cards. Several other locations and a dozen more were also searched. People were arrested, police said.
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The former president showed his search by speaking to reporters, as did his wife, Michelle, on her Instagram account.
A police official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the user is not authorized to speak publicly, said Bolsonaro would be questioned at federal police headquarters and showed that one of his closest allies, Mauro Cid, had been arrested.
When asked about the search of Bolsonaro’s home, the Federal Police press office said officials were conducting 16 searches and six arrests in Rio de Janeiro as fraudulent data such as the COVID-19 vaccine arrived in the country’s health system. he did not call Bolsonaro or El Cid.
Local media reported that the vaccination cards of Bolsonaro, his advisers and members of the circle of relatives had been altered. Police said the investigation focused on cards replaced to meet U. S. vaccine requirements. U. S. to enter the country.
“There was no adulteration on my part, it didn’t happen,” Bolsonaro told reporters after the search. “I didn’t take the vaccine, period. I have never denied it.
In an interview with Joven Pan television, Bolsonaro said his vaccination card is not required for any of his trips to the United States.
“The way heads of state are treated is different from that of ordinary citizens. Everything is arranged in advance, and my travels in the United States, at no time was I required to have a vaccination card,” Bolsonaro said.
Bolsonaro has visited the EE. UU. al at least 3 times after starting to require in November 2021 that non-citizens be fully vaccinated to enter. He traveled in June 2022 for the Summit of the Americas, in September 2022 for the UN General Assembly, and last December. after leaving the workplace for a trip to Florida.
The investigation raises questions about whether falsified vaccine data may have been included in the documentation of any member of the former president’s entourage on those trips.
During the pandemic, Bolsonaro spent months sowing doubts about the vaccine’s efficacy and defiantly refusing to get vaccinated. In September 2021, this raised doubts about his ability to attend the UN General Assembly in New York, despite having attended.
The studies add to Bolsonaro’s growing legal headaches. Federal police questioned him twice at the Brasilia headquarters over the past month in connection with separate investigations: first, about three sets of diamond jewelry he earned from Saudi Arabia and, second, about his possible role. in triggering the January 8 uprising through his supporters in the capital.
Bolsonaro is also the subject of several investigations through Brazil’s electoral tribunal into his movements in the presidential election campaign, namely his unsubstantiated claims that the country’s electronic voting formula is likely fraudulent. They threaten to strip him of his political rights and leave him unable to stand in the next elections.
Separately, Bolsonaro and his allies also face a wide-ranging Supreme Court investigation into the spread of alleged lies and misinformation in Brazil, and a federal police investigation into the alleged genocide of the Yanomami indigenous people in the Amazon rainforest by encouraging illegal acts. miners to invade their territory and thereby endanger their lives.
The former president has denied any wrongdoing in all other instances of investigation.
Police say the insertion of false COVID-19 data occurred between November 2021 and December 2022 and allowed other people whose vaccine cards were replaced to meet the U. S. vaccination requirement. U. S. to enter the country.
Bolsonaro’s former press adviser and lawyer, Fabio Wajngarten, showed reporters at federal police headquarters in Brasilia that army police officer and Bolsonaro adviser Max Guilherme had been arrested and had already been handed over to investigators.
Cid, a lieutenant colonel who has been Bolsonaro’s right-hand man, has reportedly yet to speak to investigators.
Cid would be a key figure in the scandal of the jewels delivered to Bolsonaro. The former president is accused of failing to claim the jewelry as official gifts to the Brazilian presidency or attempting to bring them into the country as personal gifts without paying the required taxes.
One of the planes seized at the Sao Paulo airport, and reports imply that Cid tried to interfere with the government in an effort to recover them on Bolsonaro’s behalf.
The investigation into the coronavirus documents comes to adjustments similar to “ideological agendas” and purport to “support the narrative aimed at attacking the COVID-19 vaccine,” police said.
For months, Bolsonaro has insisted that the antimalarial hydroxychloroquine is a remedy for COVID-19, despite a lack of falsified medical tests. At one point, he warned Brazilians that there would be no legal recourse against Pfizer for anyone suffering from irreversible side effects. He also connected the vaccine to AIDS, a claim rejected by doctors and scientists, prompting a trial in Brazil’s highest court to order an investigation into his comments.
The death toll from the pandemic in Brazil was the highest time in the world, ranking 20th in accordance with capita deaths. A congressional investigation has decided Bolsonaro deserves to be impeached for spoiling the country’s reaction to COVID-19, adding his help for unproven treatments.
Bolsonaro recently returned to Brazil after several months away from Orlando, where he usually kept a low profile outdoors in some speeches. Over the weekend, as he seeks to regain his position of influence in Brazil, he traveled to the interior of the state of Sao Paulo and participated in a primary agricultural fair.
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