Bolsonaro is subpoenaed by the PF, but warns that he will not testify – 03/05/2023 – Politics

Former President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) was summoned by the Federal Police to testify this Wednesday (3) about alleged fraud in the Ministry of Health’s vaccination system. He, however, informed the PF that he will not attend the hearing.

The former president was summoned during the search and seizure carried out at his residence in Brasília. The PF also arrested its former advisors Mauro Cid and Max Guilherme in the action. Another target of an arrest warrant is Sergio Cordeiro, who worked on Bolsonaro’s security team.

The measures are part of an investigation into an alleged “criminal association formed to commit the crimes of inserting false vaccination data against Covid-19 into the SI-PNI and RNDS systems of the Ministry of Health.”

“The investigation indicates that the group’s objective would be to keep the identity element cohesive in relation to its ideological guidelines, in this case, to support the speech aimed at the attacks on vaccination against Covid-19”, says the PF.

According to the Federal Police, the targets of the investigation would have made the false insertions between November 2021 and December 2022 so that beneficiaries could issue a vaccination certificate to travel to the United States.

According to Sheet found out, there is a suspicion that the vaccination records of Bolsonaro, Cid and the former president’s youngest daughter, Laura, were forged.

The PF also says that the steps are carried out within the investigation of the digital militias, which is being processed by the STF (Federal Supreme Court) and whose rapporteur is Minister Alexandre de Moraes.

“The investigated facts constitute, in theory, the crimes of infraction of preventive health measure, criminal association, insertion of false data in information systems and corruption of minors”.

Federal police are serving 16 search warrants and six preventive arrest warrants in Brasília and Rio de Janeiro.

Since the beginning of 2020, when the coronavirus was beginning to spread around the world, Jair Bolsonaro made a series of statements in which he always sought to minimize the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic.

As president, he propagated denialist discourse and used hysteria and fantasy words to classify the reaction of the population and the press to the pandemic.

Bolsonaro also distributed ineffective medicines against the disease, encouraged crowds, acted against the purchase of vaccines, spread false information about Covid-19 and carried out campaigns of disobedience to protective measures, such as the use of masks.