Former director general of the PRF is arrested by the Federal Police for interfering in the 2022 elections

INVESTIGATION

Operation Citizen Constitution investigates interference in elections

The Federal Police (PF) launched, this Wednesday (9), Operation Citizen Constitution, to investigate possible actions by public agents to interfere in the electoral process of the second round of the 2022 presidential elections. Federal Bus Station (PRF), Silvinei Vasques, was arrested.

According to PF investigations, members of the PRF would have blocked roads in the Northeast Region to make it difficult for voters to travel on October 30, 2022.

“The crimes investigated would have been planned since the beginning of October of that year, and, on the day of the second round, ostensive patrolling was carried out and directed to the Northeast Region of the country”, explained the PF, in a note.

Ten search and seizure warrants and one preventive arrest warrant are being served in Santa Catarina, Rio Grande do Sul, the Federal District and Rio Grande do Norte. The warrants were issued by the Federal Supreme Court (STF). The operation also has the support of the PRF’s Internal Affairs Department, which determined the collection of testimonies from 47 federal highway police officers.

“The facts investigated configure, in theory, the crimes of prevarication and political violence, provided for in the Brazilian Penal Code, and the crimes of preventing or embarrassing the exercise of suffrage and hiding, withholding, hoarding or refusing on election day the supply, normally to all, utilities, food and means of transport, or grant exclusivity thereof to a particular party or candidate, of the Brazilian Electoral Code”, says the note.

The PF also informed that the name of the operation – Citizen Constitution – is a reference to the Brazilian Constitution, enacted in 1988. It expresses the rights of citizens, including the right to vote, “greater representation of democracy”.

In June, in testimony before the Joint Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry on January 8, in Congress, Vasques denied any plan to prevent voters of then-candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the Northeast from voting in the second round of elections last year.

In a note, the PRF reported that its general inspector, Vinícius Behrmann, has been monitoring the operation, since the beginning of the morning, at the PF headquarters, in Brasília, and that the corporation collaborates with the authorities that investigate the allegations of interference, “ with the provision of data referring to the work of the institution, such as the number of vehicles inspected and fines imposed on federal highways”.

In parallel with the investigations in the STF, three administrative disciplinary proceedings were opened, within the scope of the PRF, to investigate the conduct of the former director general. The procedures were forwarded to the Comptroller General of the Union (CGU), the body with competence to investigate the conduct of Silvinei Vasques.

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