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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.
READ MORE: Ex-leader Bolsonaro returns to Brazil after 3 months in Florida
The president showed the search for his home in an interview with reporters, as did his wife Michelle on her Instagram account. He said his phone was not seized, unlike media reports.
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.
Local media reported that the vaccination cards of Bolsonaro, his advisers and members of the circle of relatives had been tampered with. During the pandemic, Bolsonaro spent months sowing doubts about the vaccine’s effectiveness and defiantly refusing to get vaccinated. In September 2021, this cast doubt on his ability to attend the UN General Assembly in New York.
“There was no adulteration on my part, it didn’t happen,” Bolsonaro told reporters Wednesday after the search. “I didn’t take the vaccine, period. I have never denied it.
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 won 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 Yanomami indigenous people in the Amazon rainforest through the promotion of 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. vaccine requirement. U. S. to enter the country.
The investigation said the purpose was related to “ideological agendas” and aimed to “support the narrative to attack the COVID-19 vaccine,” it 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, the former president warned Brazilians that there would be no legal recourse against Pfizer for anyone. suffering 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. A congressional investigation has decided that Bolsonaro deserves to be prosecuted for spoiling the national reaction to COVID-19, adding to it by insisting on unproven treatments.
Bolsonaro recently returned to Brazil after several months away from Orlando, where he generally kept a low profile outdoors in some speeches. This 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.
Biller reported from Rio de Janeiro.
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