Brazil's federal police indicted the country's former president Jair Bolsonaro for suspected fraud on his vaccination records, news agency Reuters reported citing two sources related to the matter on Tuesday. An investigation by the country's comptroller general's office had already shown that Bolsonaro's vaccination records were false. In addition to Bolsonaro, one of his former aides, Mauro Cid, who was arrested in May last year as part of the investigation, was also indicted.
According to the sources, Bolsonaro was indicted on charges of entering false data into the country's Unified Health System (SUS) and forming a criminal organization. Contacted by Reuters, the former president reiterated that he had not taken the COVID-19 vaccine and said he was calm.
"It's a selective investigation. I'm calm, I don't owe anything," said Bolsonaro. "The world knows that I didn't take the vaccine." During his tenure, Bolsonaro repeatedly downplayed the importance of immunization and social distancing measures during the pandemic, which killed more than 7,00,000 people in Brazil.
Did Bolsonaro take the covid vaccine?
Police accuse Bolsonaro and his aides of tampering with the health ministry's database shortly before he travelled to the US 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 US, where he remained for the final days of his term and the first months of Lula's term. If convicted for falsifying health data, the 68-year-old politician could spend up to 12 years behind bars, and as little as two years, according to legal analyst Zilan Costa.
The maximum jail time for a charge of criminal association is four years, he said.
Bolsonaro retains staunch allegiance among his base, as shown by an outpouring of support last month with an estimated 185,000 people clogging Sao Paulo's main boulevard to decry what they — and the former president — characterise as political persecution. Brazil's top electoral court has already ruled Bolsonaro ineligible until 2030 because he abused his power during the 2022 campaign and cast unfounded doubts on the country's electronic voting system.
Other investigations include one seeking to determine whether Bolsonaro tried to sneak two sets of expensive diamond jewellery into Brazil and prevent them from being incorporated into the presidency's public collection. Another relates to his alleged involvement in the January 8, 2023 uprising in capital Brasilia, soon after Lula took power, that resembled the Capitol riot in Washington two years prior. He has denied wrongdoing in both cases.
(With inputs from agency)
