The former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro and some of his closest allies are among dozens of people formally accused by federal police of being part of a criminal conspiracy designed to obliterate Brazil’s democratic system through a rightwing coup d’état.
Federal police confirmed on Thursday that investigators had concluded their long-running investigation into what they called a coordinated attempt to “violently dismantle the constitutional state”.
In a statement, police said the report – which has been forwarded to the supreme court – formally accused a total of 37 people of crimes including involvement in an attempted coup, the formation of a criminal organization, and trying to tear down one of the world’s largest democracies.
The accused include Bolsonaro, a disgraced army captain turned populist politician, who was president from 2018 until the end of 2022, as well as some of the most important members of his far-right administration.
They included Bolsonaro’s former spy chief, the far-right congressman Alexandre Ramagem; the former defense ministers, Gen Walter Braga Netto and Gen Paulo Sérgio Nogueira de Oliveira; the former minister of institutional security, Gen Augusto Heleno; the president of Bolsonaro’s political party, Valdemar Costa Neto; and Filipe Martins, one of Bolsonaro’s top foreign policy advisers.
The long-awaited conclusion of the police investigation comes just days after federal police officers made five arrests as part of a roundup of alleged members of a plot to assassinate Bolsonaro’s leftwing successor Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and his centre-right vice-president, Geraldo Alckmin, as well as the supreme court judge Alexandre de Moraes.
Shortly before police announced the end of their inquiry, Lula voiced gratitude that the attempt to poison him had failed. “I’m alive,” the 79-year-old leftist said during a speech.
Bolsonaro has denied involvement in an attempt to overturn the result of the 2022 election, which he lost to Lula. Braga Netto and Heleno made no immediate comment about reports that they had been named in the federal police report, which the police statement said was based on a large trove of evidence gathered through plea deals, searches and the analysis of financial, internet and phone records.
More to follow …
