Brazil’s Bolsonaro indicted over alleged falsification of COVID-19 vaccination status
SAO PAULO
Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was formally accused Tuesday of falsifying his COVID-19 vaccination status, marking the first indictment for the embattled far-right leader, with more allegations potentially in store.
The federal police indictment released by the Supreme Court alleged that Bolsonaro and 16 others inserted false information into a public health database to make it appear that the then-president, his 12-year-old daughter and several others in his circle had received the COVID-19 vaccine.
Police detective Fábio Alvarez Shor, who signed the indictment, said in his report that Bolsonaro and his aides changed their vaccination records in order to “issue their respective (vaccination) certificates and use them to cheat current health restrictions.”
“The investigation found several false insertions between November 2021 and December 2022, and also many actions of using fraudulent documents,” Shor added.
The detective said in the indictment that Bolsonaro’s aide-de-camp, Mauro Cid, told investigators the former president asked him to insert the false data into the system for both Bolsonaro and his adolescent daughter. Cid also said he delivered the vaccination certificates to Bolsonaro personally.
During the pandemic, Bolsonaro was one of the few world leaders who railed against the vaccine. He openly flouted health restrictions and encouraged other Brazilians to follow his example. His administration ignored several offers from the pharmaceutical company Pfizer to sell Brazil tens of millions of shots in 2020, and he openly criticized a move by Sao Paulo state’s governor to buy vaccines from the Chinese company Sinovac when no other doses were available.
Brazil’s prosecutor general’s office will have the final say on whether to use the indictment to file charges against Bolsonaro at the Supreme Court. The case stems from one of several investigations targeting Bolsonaro, who governed from 2019 to 2022.
Bolsonaro’s lawyer, Fábio Wajngarten, called his client’s indictment “absurd” and said he did not have access to it.
“When he was president, he was completely exempted from showing any kind of certificate on his trips. This is political persecution and an attempt to void the enormous political capital that has only grown,” Wajngarten said.
The former president denied any wrongdoing during questioning in May 2023.
Police accuse Bolsonaro and his aides of tampering with the health ministry’s database shortly before he traveled to the United States in December 2022, two months after he lost his reelection bid to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Bolsonaro needed a certificate of vaccination to enter the U.S., where he remained for the final days of his term and the first months of Lula’s term. The former president has repeatedly said he has never taken a COVID-19 vaccine.
If convicted of falsifying health data, Bolsonaro, 68, could spend up to 12 years in prison or as little as two years, according to legal analyst Zilan Costa.
“What Bolsonaro will argue in this case is whether he did insert the data or enable others to do it, or not. And that is plain and simple: Either you have the evidence or you don’t. It is a very serious crime with a very harsh sentence for those convicted,” Costa told The Associated Press.
Shor also said he is awaiting information from the U.S. Justice Department to “clarify whether those under investigation did make use of the false vaccination certificates upon their arrival and stay in American territory.”
If so, further charges could be leveled against Bolsonaro, Shor wrote without specifying in which country.
The indictment sheds new light on a Senate committee inquiry that ended in October 2021 with a recommendation of nine criminal charges against Bolsonaro alleging that he mismanaged the pandemic. Then-prosecutor general Augusto Aras, who was widely seen as a Bolsonaro ally, declined to move the case forward.
Brazilian media reported that Aras’ successor, Paulo Gonet, was to meet lawmakers later Tuesday to discuss the possibility of filing charges.
Bolsonaro retains staunch allegiance among his political base, as shown by an outpouring of support last month, when an estimated 185,000 people clogged Sao Paulo’s main boulevard to decry what they — and the former president — characterize as political persecution.