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Former Bolsonaro aide testifies in Brazil about vaccination fraud

Former Bolsonaro aide testifies in Brazil about vaccination fraud
Photo: Metrópoles

May 18 |

Lieutenant Colonel Mauro Cid, former aide-de-camp to former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, will testify today at the Federal Police (PF) as part of an investigation into the falsification of anti-Covid-19 vaccine data.

Minister Alexandre de Moraes, of the Federal Supreme Court (STF), ordered on May 3 the PF to arrest Cid, in addition to conducting a search and seizure at the former president’s house.

The former paratrooper’s home was the subject of one of the search and seizure warrants, and the agents also collected the former president’s cell phone.

“I never said I took the [Covid-19] vaccine. I was never asked for a vaccination card in the United States. There is no manipulation on my part,” said the far-right politician when he left his residence in Brasília, accompanied by his defense lawyers.

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On that occasion, 16 search and arrest warrants were served, and six preventive arrest warrants were issued in Brasília and Rio de Janeiro.

“The false insertions, which occurred between November 2021 and December 2022, had as a consequence the alteration of the truth about a legally relevant fact, that is, the immunized status against Covid-19 of the beneficiaries,” said the PF.

Therefore, it added, “such persons were able to issue the respective vaccination certificates and use them to circumvent the sanitary restrictions in force imposed by the public authorities (Brazil and the United States) aimed at preventing the spread of contagious disease”.

The suspicion is that the vaccination records of Bolsonaro, Cid and Laura, the ex-governor’s youngest daughter, were falsified.

Simulated information was entered into the Ministry of Health system between November 2021 and December 2022 to obtain the vaccination certificate and travel to the United States.

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Bolsonaro assured the PF, during a testimony on May 16, that he did not know about an alleged scheme that rigged the inoculation data against Covid-19.

In the statement, to which the portal R7 and Record TV had access, the ex-military admitted knowing Ailton Barros Gonçalves, retired Army major and arrested on suspicion of involvement in the deceptive web.

To the PF, Bolsonaro affirmed that “if Mauro Cid devised (fraudulent scheme of vaccination cards) it was in absence, without any knowledge or guidance” of the former head of state.

The law enforcement force also found dialogues between allies of the former Army captain that show an articulation for a coup attempt, with the aim of keeping Bolsonaro in power and arresting De Moraes.

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