Brasilia [Brazil], March 20: Brazilian police have formally accused former President Jair Bolsonaro of fraud relating to his Covid vaccination records, paving the way for possible criminal charges in the Supreme Court.
His health records say he received the vaccine in Sao Paulo in 2021. But an investigation later found he was not in the city at the time.
Bolsonaro, a COVID-19 sceptic who publicly vowed never to have the vaccine, has denied any knowledge of records being tampered with.
Almost 700,000 people have died of COVID-19 in Brazil, according to Johns Hopkins University in the US.
The federal police accuse Bolsonaro - who regularly downplayed the severity of the virus - and eight other people of plotting to issue "false certificates to obtain undue advantages" during the pandemic.
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 Fabio 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.
The detective said in the indictment that Bolsonaro's aide-de-camp, Mauro Cid, told investigators the former president asked him to insert the false data into the system for both himself and his adolescent daughter. Cid also said he delivered the vaccination certificates to Bolsonaro personally.
Vaccination was an entry requirement for many countries, including the US.
Brazil's attorney general's office will now decide whether to charge the former president.
The 68-year-old was questioned by police in connection with the allegations in May last year and his house was raided.
He denied the accusations and accused authorities of trying to "fabricate a case" against him. The new indictment is just the latest legal battle he is facing as the former president had to surrender his passport last month over an investigation into accusations he tried to overturn the October 2022 election results and pressure military chiefs to join a coup attempt.
During the pandemic, Bolsonaro was one of the few world leaders who railed against the vaccine. He openly flouted health restrictions and encouraged 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 criticized a move by Sao Paulo state's governor to buy vaccines from Chinese company Sinovac when no other doses were available. After he lost to left-winger Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva in the presidential poll thousands of his supporters stormed government buildings in the capital BrasÃlia - including the presidential palace, the Supreme Court and Congress - looting and vandalising the buildings.
Bolsonaro is still barred from running for office for eight years for undermining the electoral system in Brazil and claiming the last election was fraudulent, despite there being no evidence of electoral fraud. He was in the US when the attack on Congress happened. He returned to Brazil in March 2023, saying he had nothing to fear.
Source: Qatar Tribune