Brazil’s federal police have indicted the country’s former president Jair Bolsonaro for suspected fraud on his Covid-19 vaccination data.
Police will allege Mr Bolsonaro inserted false information into the public health database to make it appear as though the then-president had received the Covid-19 vaccine.
They will allege Mr Bolsonaro also forged the vaccination data of his 12-year-old daughter and several others in his circle.
Police say Mr Bolsonaro tampered with the health ministry’s database shortly before he travelled to the US in December 2022, two months after he lost his re-election bid to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
He needed a certificate of vaccination to enter the US, where he remained for the final days of his term.
During the pandemic, Mr Bolsonaro was one of the few world leaders railing against the vaccine, openly flouting health restrictions and encouraging society to follow his example.
His administration ignored several emails from pharmaceutical company Pfizer offering to sell Brazil tens of millions of shots in 2020.
Mr Bolsonaro also openly criticised a move by former Sao Paulo governor João Doria to buy vaccines from Chinese company Sinovac when no jabs were otherwise available.
During the pandemic, 700,000 Brazilians died of Covid-19, according to Reuters.
Brazil’s prosecutor-general’s office will have the final say on whether to use the police indictment to file charges against Mr Bolsonaro at the Supreme Court.
An investigation by the country’s comptroller general’s office had already shown that Mr Bolsonaro’s vaccination records were falsified.
‘World knows that I didn’t take the vaccine’
When contacted by Reuters, the former president reiterated 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,” Mr Bolsonaro said.
“The world knows that I didn’t take the vaccine.”
It is one of several investigations targeting Bolsonaro, who governed between 2019 and 2022.
If convicted for falsifying health data, the 68-year-old politician could spend up to 12 years behind bars, or as little as two years, according to legal analyst Zilan Costa.
Brazil’s top electoral court has already ruled Mr Bolsonaro ineligible until 2030, on the grounds that he abused his power during the 2022 campaign and cast unfounded doubts on the country’s electronic voting system.
Other investigations against Mr Bolsonaro include one seeking to determine whether he 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 Mr Lula took power.
The uprising closely resembled the Capitol riot in Washington in 2021.
He has denied wrongdoing in both cases.
AP/Reuters