Brazilian police raided the home of former President Jair Bolsonaro on Wednesday as part of an investigation into the alleged falsification of Covid-19 vaccination certificates. The Federal Police (PF) explained in a press release that it had carried out a total of 16 searches, in Rio de Janeiro and Brasilia, targeting “a criminal network” suspected of “inserting false vaccination data against Covid-19 on the systems of public health”, but without quoting Jair Bolsonaro by name.
The false vaccination certificates would have been “used to circumvent health restrictions imposed by public authorities in Brazil and the United States”, can we also read in the press release. Asked by AFP, the PF did not immediately confirm whether the far-right ex-president (2019-2022) was targeted by the police operation.
According to the media, Mauro Cid, former aide-de-camp to Jair Bolsonaro during his presidency, was arrested as part of the police operation. An AFP photographer saw a Federal Police car leave the closed housing estate where Jair Bolsonaro lives in Brasilia, without being able to identify the occupants of the vehicle.
Seizure of Bolsonaro’s phone
According to several Brazilian media, the mobile phones of the former head of state and his wife Michelle were seized. During his tenure, Jair Bolsonaro continued to criticize anti-Covid vaccines, assuring several times that he had no intention of being immunized, while the pandemic killed more than 700,000 people in Brazil.
Defeated in the October presidential election, he then spent three months in the United States, leaving Brazil two days before the inauguration of his left-wing successor Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Since his return to Brazil at the end of March, Jair Bolsonaro has been interviewed twice by the Federal Police. The first hearing took place on April 5, in the case of jewelry offered by Saudi Arabia illegally entering Brazil, and the second last week as part of an investigation into his alleged role in the January 8 riots. in Brasilia, when the places of power were ransacked by individuals refusing to accept the election of Lula.