Brazil’s public prosecutor asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to drop a probe into far-right ex-president Jair Bolsonaro for allegedly falsifying Covid-19 vaccine certificates while in power.
The decision came a day after the court decided to put the former leader on trial on charges of plotting a coup in a case that could torpedo his hopes of making a Donald Trump-style political comeback.
The ex-army captain, widely criticized for his handling of the pandemic that killed more than 700,000 people in Brazil, was accused of ordering the falsification of vaccination certificates for himself, his wife and daughter.
The prosecutor’s office said it had asked for the case to be dropped because it was based “solely” on the testimony of former Bolsonaro aide Mauro Cid.
Paulo Cunha, one of Bolsonaro’s lawyers, welcomed the decision, claiming that the case was “devoid of any evidence.”
“We hope that the other investigations will suffer the same fate,” he said.
Cid, Bolsonaro’s former right-hand man, is also the prosecution’s main witness in the attempted coup proceedings.
However, the Public Prosecutor’s Office said that case “differs considerably” from the vaccine certificates probe because “convincing, independent evidence has been produced by the Federal Police.”
The 70-year-old former president faces a possible prison sentence of 40 years and political banishment if found guilty of seeking to wrest power from Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva after divisive elections the leftist won by a whisker.
Even if acquitted, Bolsonaro will need to overcome a ban on him holding public office until 2030 in order to fulfil his pledge to run for the presidency in elections next year.
AFP
