Bolsonaro testified before the police for the alleged fraud with the vaccination certificate | They suspect that the data of the former Brazilian president was manipulated

2023-05-17 00:40:46

The former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro was presented this Tuesday at the headquarters of the Federal Police in Brasilia to declare as suspected of alleged fraud with covid vaccine certificates. This is the third appearance of the far-right leader in the last two months before the police authorities, who also summoned him to testify for his alleged intention to seize some Saudi jewels that are property of the State and for his alleged support for the coup attempt. last January 8.

The keys of the accusation

In relation to the anticovid vaccine, the Federal Police suspect that the data of the ex-president and that of some of his relatives and advisers would have been manipulated so that they could enter the United States at a time when the certificates were required by the authorities of that country. For this matter, the Federal Police raided the residences of Bolsonaro and six of his collaborators on May 3, four of whom remain in custody.

The data would have been manipulated through illegal access to the Ministry of Health systems carried out in November 2021 and December 2022. In the latter case, it would have been before the trip that Bolsonaro, still as president, made to the United States on December 30, two days before the inauguration of the current president, the progressive Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, whose victory at the polls put in doubt and to whom he refused to hand over power.

What does Bolsonaro say?

Bolsonarowho arrived at the police headquarters in Brasilia on Tuesday afternoon to give an affidavit, denied having committed any improper action, stating that never claimed to be vaccinated nor did he present documents indicating that he was. A police statement on the investigation states that the falsification of vaccination records was intended to “sustain the speech aimed at attacking the vaccine against covid-19″, but did not give further details.

On the day of the operation at his residence, Bolsonaro had stated that he was not vaccinated. “I did not get vaccinated. They never asked me for a vaccination certificate to enter the United States. There is no manipulation on my part. I didn’t get vaccinated, period. I never denied it. There were people who pushed for me to get vaccinated, naturally. But I didn’t do it because I read the Pfizer prospectus,” the former president said on that occasion about the vaccines of which more than six billion doses were applied worldwide.

Another point raised by Bolsonaro’s defense, according to the newspaper Newspaper, is the fact that the then president was not at the Planalto Palace on the days when his vaccination certificate was accessed in the Unified Health System (SUS) through an IP address of the Presidency of the Republic. On May 3, Bolsonaro was summoned to testify during a search warrant carried out at his residence in Brasilia.

That day, as part of the same operation, Lieutenant Colonel Mauro Cid, a man very close to Bolsonaro during the four years he was in power (2019-2022), was arrested. Cid was arrested for participating in the alleged plot to falsify vaccination certificates against covid-19 in favor of Bolsonaro himself, the former president’s youngest daughter and several of his former advisers, according to the Federal Police.

Last week, the Metropoles portal revealed that Cid’s family has a millionaire estate in the United States that includes a mansion in the State of California, valued at 8.5 million reais (1.7 million dollars) and in which a brother of his lives. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva hinted at a ceremony in the city of Salvador that this property is actually Bolsonaro’s.

While in government, Bolsonaro denied the seriousness of the pandemic, which has left more than 700,000 deaths and almost 38 million infections in the country. The far-right leader responds in a dozen cases before courts of first instance for matters related to alleged abuses of political and economic power, as well as in five processes before the Supreme Court and in others that are processed in the electoral justice.