The former president allegedly inserted false information into the public health database to make it look like he had received the Covid vaccine
Brazil’s federal police have charged Jair Bolsonaro with fraud and falsifying his own Covid-19 vaccination data, in the first indictment against the far-right leader along with others potentially on the way.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday released the police indictment alleging that Bolsonaro and 16 others inserted false data into the public fitness database to make it appear that the former president, his 12-year-old daughter and several other members of his entourage had won Covid. -19 vaccine.
During the pandemic, Bolsonaro was one of the few world leaders to oppose the vaccine, blatantly ignoring fitness restrictions and encouraging society to follow his lead. His administration ignored several emails from the pharmaceutical company Pfizer offering to sell tens of millions of vaccines to Brazil. in 2020 and blatantly criticized São Paulo state governor João Doria’s decision to buy vaccines from China’s Sinovac when no vaccine was otherwise available.
Brazil’s attorney general will have the final say on whether to use the police indictment to file a complaint against Bolsonaro in the Supreme Court. This comes from one of several investigations targeting Bolsonaro, who governed between 2019 and 2022.
The former president reiterated that he had not received the Covid-19 vaccine and said he is calm. “It’s selective research. I’m calm, I don’t owe anything,” Bolsonaro told Reuters. “The world knows I didn’t get the vaccine. “
Police accuse Bolsonaro and his aides of falsifying the Health Ministry’s database some time before his trip to the United States in December 2022, two months after he lost his re-election bid to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Bolsonaro needed a vaccination certificate to enter the United States, where he remained for the last days of his term and the first months of Lula’s term.
If convicted of falsifying fitness data, the 68-year-old politician could spend up to 12 years in jail, and as little as two years, according to legal analyst Zilan Costa. The maximum prison sentence for a criminal conspiracy charge is 4 years. he said.
Bolsonaro maintains an unwavering loyalty among his base, as evidenced by last month’s avalanche, when an estimated 185,000 more people flooded São Paulo’s main secondary streets to denounce what they (and the former president) call political persecution.
Brazil’s top electoral court has already declared Bolsonaro ineligible until 2030, claiming he abused his strength in the 2022 crusade and cast unfounded doubts on the country’s e-voting system.
Other investigations concern whether Bolsonaro tried to smuggle two sets of valuable diamond jewelry into Brazil and prevent them from being part of the president’s public collection. Another relates to his alleged involvement in the Jan. 8, 2023, uprising in the capital. Brasilia, shortly after Lula came to power, resembled the Capitol in Washington two years earlier. He denied any wrongdoing in either case.