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Federal police have searched the mansion of Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro and arrested one of his closest aides as part of an investigation into suspected criminal efforts to fake Covid-19 vaccination records in order to travel to the United States.
Lt Col Mauro Cid Barbosa, described by the Brazilian press as Bolsonaro’s “right-hand man”, was one of six people arrested on Wednesday morning as police raided multiple addresses in the capital, Brasília, and Rio de Janeiro.
Two of Bolsonaro’s security guards were also taken into custody. The ex-president was expected to be questioned later on Wednesday. Bolsonaro’s mobile phone and that of the former first lady, Michelle Bolsonaro, were seized at their residence in Brasília, although he reportedly refused to provide police with the password.
Federal police reportedly believe a series of official Covid vaccination records were falsified on Brazil’s health ministry database in order to produce bogus vaccination certificates that would permit international travel, including to the US.
The supposedly falsified records include those of Jair Bolsonaro, his 12-year-old daughter, Laura, and Mauro Cid Barbosa and his family.
False details were reportedly inserted into the health ministry’s database between November 2021 and December last year, Bolsonaro’s last month in power after he lost October’s presidential election to his leftwing rival, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Bolsonaro has faced international condemnation for his reckless and anti-scientific handling of Brazil’s Covid outbreak, which has claimed more than 700,000 lives. The far-right radical repeatedly undermined containment and vaccinations efforts against a disease he dismissed as a “little flu”.
Bolsonaro repeatedly claimed he had refused to be vaccinated himself, although the politician refused to make his vaccination records public to back up that claim.
Last week Lula, who took office in January, said Bolsonaro should be brought before a court for his actions during that “slaughter”.
More details soon …
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