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RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — When Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s term ended in the final days of December 2022, he made the decision to skip the ritual of handing over the presidential sash to his successor and instead planned to travel abroad.
But there’s a problem, according to a federal police indictment released Tuesday: Bolsonaro didn’t have the vaccination certificate required by U. S. authorities.
Bolsonaro then turned to his aide-de-camp, Mauro Cid, and asked him to insert false knowledge into the public fitness formula to make it look like he and his 12-year-old daughter had won the COVID-19 vaccine, according to the indictment.
Cid told police he had ordered him to produce the certificate, then posted the certificate at the presidential palace on Dec. 22 and personally delivered it to Bolsonaro, according to Detective Fábio Alvarez Shor, who signed the indictment.
This is the first accusation against Bolsonaro since he left his job, and falsifying public records in Brazil is no small feat; If the Attorney General’s Office decides to use the indictment to file a complaint with the Supreme Court, the 68-year-old politician could spend up to 12 years in jail, or even just two years, according to legal analyst Zilan Costa. A separate charge of criminal conspiracy carries a maximum criminal sentence of 4 years, he said.
Bolsonaro, who did not comment Tuesday, had in the past denied any wrongdoing during his questioning in May 2023.
In addition to allegations that Bolsonaro falsified documents, another investigation is underway into whether he tried to smuggle two sets of valuable diamond jewelry into Brazil and prevent them from being included in the president’s public collection. Police are also investigating his alleged involvement in the Jan. 8, 2023, uprising in the capital, shortly after Lula arrived by force. It was similar to the insurrection at the U. S. Capitol in Washington two years earlier and was aimed at bringing Bolsonaro back to force. Commanders who served under Bolsonaro told police that the former leader presented them with a plan to stay in office after squandering his 2022 re-election bid.
But it was his moves — the COVID-19 pandemic, which he called a “miserable cold” by flouting fitness restrictions and encouraging Brazilians to follow suit — that would have arguably hit him first. Once vaccines are available, he dismissed them as unnecessary, even though Brazil has one of the highest death rates in the world, and continually said he would not get the vaccine himself.
Its leadership ignored several offers from pharmaceutical company Pfizer to sell tens of millions of vaccines to Brazil in 2020, and brazenly criticized the Sao Paulo state governor’s decision to buy vaccines from China’s Sinovac when doses were not available.
Bolsonaro was not the one charged on Tuesday: Cid and 15 others were accused of participating in a scheme to falsify records for themselves and others.
“The former president never ordered or knew of any of his advisers presenting a vaccination certificate with ideologically false content,” three of Bolsonaro’s lawyers said last Tuesday. “When he entered the United States at the end of December 2022, he was not applying for a vaccination certificate since, as President of the Republic, he was exempt from this requirement. “
Shor, the police detective, wrote in his indictment that he is awaiting data from the U. S. Department of Justice to “clarify whether the individuals under investigation did indeed use a false vaccination certificate upon arrival and remained in the United States. “”They may simply oppose Bolsonaro,” Shor wrote without specifying in which country.
His indictment shed new light on a Senate committee investigation that ended in October 2021 with a complaint of criminal charges against Bolsonaro, alleging he mishandled the pandemic. Attorney General Augusto Aras, widely known as Bolsonaro’s best friend, later refused to approve the case forward.
Brazilian media reported that Aras’ successor, Paulo Gonet, met with lawmakers on Tuesday night to discuss the option of filing a complaint.
Bolsonaro maintains an unwavering loyalty within his political base, as evidenced by last month’s avalanche, when some 185,000 more people stormed Sao Paulo’s main side street to denounce what they (and the former president) call political persecution.
The indictment will deter his supporters and only verify the suspicions of his critics, said Carlos Melo, a political science professor at Sao Paulo’s Insper University.
“It’s worse for him in court,” Melo said. It may just go into a trend of convictions and then arrests. “
Brazil’s top electoral court has already declared Bolsonaro ineligible before 2030, claiming he abused his strength in the 2022 crusade and cast unfounded doubt on the country’s e-voting system.
After squandering the October 2022 election, he never conceded defeat. And with a new vaccination certificate in hand, in the face of the police accusation, he went to South Florida.
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