Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is one of the targets of operation ‘Tempus Veritatis’, launched Thursday (8) by the Federal Police of Brazil to investigate the existence of an alleged criminal organization believed to have attempted a coup d’état.
Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered the federal agents to seize Bolsonaro’s passport as part of the crackdown. Arrest orders also target direct advisers to the former president, including military personnel.
The operation was launched after Bolsonaro’s former aide Lieutenant Colonel Mauro Cid signed a plea bargain with federal investigators. The agreement was sent to the Prosecutor-General’s Office and has been ratified by the Supreme Court.
On Thursday, 33 search and seizure warrants and four preventive arrest orders were carried out. In all, 48 precautionary measures have been ordered by Justice Moraes, among them banning those being investigated from maintaining contact or leaving Brazil.
“The investigations indicate that the group was divided into nuclei to disseminate fraud in the 2022 presidential elections, even before they were held, in order to enable and legitimize a military intervention, in a digital militia dynamic,” the police reported.
The accusations
Bolsonaro and dozens of top aides, ministers and military leaders coordinated to undermine the Brazilian public’s faith in the election and set the stage for a potential coup, the federal police said.
Their efforts included spreading information about voter fraud, drafting legal arguments for new elections, recruiting military personnel to support a coup, surveilling judges, and encouraging and guiding protesters who eventually raided government buildings, according to the police.
The defense
On X (former Twitter), lawyer Fabio Wajngarten, Bolsonaro’s counsel, wrote that “in compliance with today’s rulings,” the former president will hand over his passport to the authorities.
Bolsonaro said to Folha de São Paulo newspaper that he was the innocent victim of a politically motivated operation.
“I left the government more than a year ago and I continue to suffer relentless persecution. “Forget about me. There is already someone else running the country”, he said.
Mr. Bolsonaro has already been ruled ineligible to run for office until 2030 over his attempts to undermine the voting systems. But the accusations unveiled on Thursday show that Brazilian authorities believe the former president and his allies had carried out a far more organized plan to subvert Brazil’s young democracy.
Source: Agência Brasil and The New York Times