search at Bolsonaro, suspected of having falsified anti-Covid vaccine certificates

New legal trouble for the former Brazilian president. The police searched, Wednesday, May 3, the home of Jair Bolsonaro and seized his phone and a weapon, as part of an investigation into the falsification of vaccination certificates against Covid-19 by those around him. “I haven’t falsified anything. I haven’t been vaccinated, period”the far-right former president (2019-2022) told reporters outside his residence in the Brazilian capital, Brasilia. “All citizens are equal, but from there to search the home of an ex-president just to create a (media) event…”lamented the one whose management of the pandemic has been widely criticized.

The Federal Police (PF) explained in a press release that they had carried out 16 searches, in Rio de Janeiro and Brasilia, aimed at “a criminal network” suspected “to introduce false Covid vaccination data into public health systems”. 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. Six arrest warrants have been issued. According to Brazilian media, the police arrested Mauro Cid, a former aide-de-camp and handyman for Bolsonaro during his presidency.

He would have thanks to contacts in the health system or the administration obtained fraudulent certificates of vaccination for Bolsonaro and his daughter, himself and members of his family, according to the police. Bolsonaro would have been “perfectly aware” manipulation of health registers allowing the corona-skeptical president and his entourage to circumvent international travel restrictions in particular, adds the PF. Alexandre de Moraes, the judge of the Supreme Court who ordered the searches, considered “plausible” the indications tending to prove a personal implication of the ex-president in these frauds.