Police seize Bolsonaro’s passport as part of ‘coup’ investigation

Brazil’s federal authorities have carried out 33 search warrants and ordered the arrest of four men.

Federal police officers leave the headquarters of the Liberal Party in Brasilia on Thursday. Picture: AFP

Jair Bolsonaro, the former president of Brazil, is being investigated over his role in an alleged coup to keep him in power following his defeat in the 2022 election.

Brazil’s federal police on Thursday carried out 33 search warrants, including at the headquarters of Mr Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party in Brasilia, and ordered the arrest of four men – one of whom is a former special adviser to the former president – and three others who are army officers.

Mr Bolsonaro, 68, has not been arrested or directly charged with any crime. Police visited his beach house in Rio de Janeiro state on Thursday and were reported to have ordered him to hand over his passport, remain in Brazil and have no contact with any of those under investigation.

He told Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper he had been the victim of “relentless persecution” since leaving office. He said: “Forget about me. There is already someone else running the country.”

His lawyer and adviser, Fabio Wajngarten, confirmed in a statement on X that the former president’s passport had been handed over to the authorities.

Brazilian police said the operation, codenamed Tempus Veritatis, would “investigate the criminal organisation that acted in an attempt to carry out a coup d’etat and abolish the democratic rule of law, in order to obtain political advantage by keeping the then president of the republic in power”.

Jair Bolsonaro as been told by police to remain in Brazil and have no contact with any of those under investigation, according to reports. Picture: AFP

Mr Wajngarten confirmed the former president was among those being investigated. Police said those targeted had worked to “construct a narrative” that fraud had been committed in the 2022 election “to enable and legitimise military intervention”.

For more than a year before the deeply contentious election, which pitched Mr Bolsonaro, a right-wing former soldier, against his long-term nemesis, left-wing former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Mr Bolsonaro repeatedly insinuated that the country’s electoral system was flawed – and that if he failed to be re-elected it would be the result of fraud.

When he did lose the election in October 2022, with a margin of less than 2 per cent between him and Lula, his supporters staged a series of protests, calling for military intervention to overturn the result. The protests culminated in a riot in the capital, Brasilia, on January 8, 2023, shortly after Lula’s inauguration. Government buildings including the congress, Supreme Court and presidential offices were vandalised.

Police allege that in November 2022 Mr Bolsonaro received a draft decree from two former advisers to carry out a coup, and gave his approval to a plan to arrest Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes and hold new presidential elections.

Much of the information in the police report appears to have been gleaned from the questioning of one of his former assistants, Lieutenant Colonel Mauro Cid, who was arrested last year as part of a separate investigation into alleged illicit activities during the Bolsonaro administration, including apparent attempts to sell jewellery gifted to the president and his wife while he was in office. Colonel Cid, imprisoned last year, is co-operating with the police.

Lula said on X on Thursday it was “very difficult” for him to comment on an ongoing police operation, but he hoped “no excesses would be committed, and that the full rigour of the law would be applied”.

The Times