Jair Bolsonaro, the former president of Brazil, was indicted by the country’s federal police on Tuesday for allegedly falsifying his Covid-19 vaccination status while he was still in office.
Police said Bolsonaro is accused of ordering one of his aides to enter false vaccination data for himself and his 12-year-old daughter into Brazil’s Ministry of Health database. Sixteen others, including the former president’s closest aide Mauro Cid, were also indicted for allegedly doctoring vaccination certificates so that they could travel to the U.S., which required proof of vaccination for entry during the pandemic.
Bolsonaro traveled to the U.S. at least five separate times between March 2020 and December 2022. He publicly disregarded a vaccination requirement during a September 2021 trip to the United Nations headquarters in New York City, after which at least one member of his delegation tested positive for Covid.
Brazil’s supreme court released the indictment, which marks the first time that Bolsonaro has faced criminal charges. Brazil’s federal prosecutors now must decide whether to formally file those charges against Bolsonaro and his aides.
Widely known for his opposition to Covid-19 vaccines while in office, the former president said he would never get vaccinated against the coronavirus. Brazilian authorities started looking into Bolsonaro’s vaccination records after he left office at the end of 2022. In January, it was first announced that the data he provided to the country’s Health Ministry was fake.
Bolsonaro’s lawyer, Fabio Wajngarten, called the indictment “absurd” and claimed his client was exempt from providing proof of vaccination for U.S. entry.
“The whole world knows [Bolsonaro’s] personal opinion on the subject of vaccination,” the lawyer wrote on X. “While serving as president, he was completely exempt from presenting any type of certificate on his trips.”
After police raided his home and seized his cellphone as part of the investigation last May, Bolsonaro said he was “never asked for my vaccine certificate” when traveling to the U.S. At the time, he also claimed his vaccination card had not been forged.
The conservative leader, whom former president Donald Trump endorsed for reelection in 2022, also faces an investigation into whether he staged a coup to stay in power after losing to leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who is the current president of Brazil. On January 8, 2023, a week after Lula was inaugurated, Bolsonaro’s supporters rioted and broke into the nation’s supreme court and other government buildings to protest the transfer of power.
Despite his denial of any involvement in inciting the violent attacks, Bolsonaro was barred from running for office again until 2030 after Brazil’s highest electoral court ruled last year that he abused his power during the 2022 election campaign.