CNN Central News & Network–ITDC India Epress/ITDC News Bhopal: Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was formally accused Tuesday of falsifying his COVID-19 vaccination data, marking the first indictment for the embattled far-right leader, with more allegations potentially in store.
The federal police indictment released by the Supreme Court alleged that Bolsonaro and 16 others inserted false information into a public health database to make it appear as though the then-president, his 12-year-old daughter and several others in his circle had received the COVID-19 vaccine.
Police detective Fbio Alvarez Shor, who signed the indictment, 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.
The investigation found several false insertions between November 2021 and December 2022, and also many actions of using fraudulent documents, Shor added.
During the pandemic, Bolsonaro was one of the few world leaders who railed against the vaccine, openly flouting health restrictions and encouraging other Brazilians to follow his example. His administration ignored several offers from pharmaceutical company Pfizer to sell Brazil tens of millions of shots in 2020, and he openly criticised a move by Sao Paulo state’s governor to buy vaccines from Chinese company Sinovac when no other doses were available.
Brazil’s prosecutor-general’s office will have the final say on whether to use the indictment to file charges against Bolsonaro at the Supreme Court. The case stems from one of several investigations targeting Bolsonaro, who governed between 2019 and 2022.
Bolsonaro lawyer Fbio Wajngarten called his client’s indictment absurd and said he did not have access to it.
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, Wajngarten said.
