The decision was made by Judge Flávio Dino, who requested the reopening of various aspects of a case that had been shelved by the Attorney General’s Office in mid-2022, when Bolsonaro was still in power.
At the time, the then attorney general, Augusto Aras, a man loyal to “Bolsonaroism”, rejected the contents of a report drawn up by a special Senate committee, which investigated the government’s actions in the face of the pandemic and detected various irregularities.
At the time, a parliamentary committee accused Bolsonaro of nine offences: prevarication; charlatanism; epidemic resulting in death; violation of preventive health measures; irregular use of public funds; incitement to crime; falsification of private documents; crime of responsibility and crimes against humanity.
Dino arrived at the Supreme Court in February, appointed by the current President of Brazil, Lula da Silva, with whom he had served as Minister of Justice since January 2023.
During the pandemic, he was governor of the state of Maranhão and, at the time, was a very harsh critic of the Bolsonaro government’s denialism in the face of the health crisis.
In the order in which he reopened the case, he stated that “the parliamentary investigation pointed to evidence of crimes against the public administration, especially in contracts, fraud in public tenders, overpricing, embezzlement of public funds, signing contracts with front companies”, among many others.
Some of these situations refer to the purchase of medicines that were supposedly effective against Covid-19, but which turned out to be ineffective and were nevertheless purchased by the government and distributed in the public health network, such as chloroquine.
Dino’s decision, which gave the Federal Police 60 days to investigate the case, was announced a week after the First Panel of the Federal Supreme Court (STF), of which he is a member, sentenced Bolsonaro to 27 years and three months in prison for attacking the democratic rule of law.
Platform with Lusa
