The Supreme Court released the federal police indictment which accused Bolsonaro and 16 of his aides of entering false information into a public health database to make it appear as though he, his daughter, and others close to him had received the Covid vaccine in December 2022, per AP News.
Bolsonaro was a vocal critic against the Covid vaccine and vaccine mandates while he was president of Brazil, even ignoring pharma giant Pfizer's attempts to sell Brazil tens of millions of shots in 2020. He encouraged other Brazilian leaders to follow his example.
The police detective who signed the indictment, Fábio Alvarez Shor, said in his report that Bolsonaro and his aides changed their vaccination records in order to “issue their respective (vaccination) certificates and use them to cheat current health restrictions,” basically to obtain a vaccination card to enter the US.
“The investigation found several false insertions between November 2021 and December 2022, and also many actions of using fraudulent documents,” he said.
The indictment said that Bolsonaro's head aide, Mario Cid, had told investigators that he was asked by the former president to enter the false data in the health ministry's database.
However Bolosanro's lawyer, Fabio Wajngarten, called the indictment "absurd."
“When he was president, he was completely exonerated from showing any kind of certificate on his trips. This is a political persecution and an attempt to void the enormous political capital that has only grown,” he said.
Bolsonaro additionally denied any wrongdoing when he was questioned in May 2023.
“What Bolsonaro will argue in this case is whether he did insert the data or enable others to do it, or not. And that is plain simple: Either you have the evidence or you don’t. It is a very serious crime with a very harsh sentence for those convicted,” Costa said.
