Brazilian police search ex-president Bolsonaro’s home

Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro (AP)

Brazil’s federal police have searched former president Jair Bolsonaro’s home and seized his phone, according to an official.

The source said that Mr Bolsonaro will be deposed at federal police headquarters and also confirmed that one of his closest allies, Mauro Cid, has been arrested.

Asked about the search of Mr Bolsonaro’s home, police said officers were carrying out 16 searches and six arrests in Rio de Janeiro related to the introduction of fraudulent data related to the Covid-19 vaccine into the nation’s health system.

The statement did not name either Mr Bolsonaro or Cid.

An ally of Mr Bolsonaro has been arrested, sources said (AP)

Television network Globo broadcast images that showed police inside Mr Bolsonaro’s condominium complex in Brasilia.

Local media reported that the vaccine cards of Mr Bolsonaro and his family members were altered. During the pandemic, Mr Bolsonaro repeatedly sowed doubt about the efficacy of the vaccine.

“We trust that all doubts the Judiciary has will be clarified and it will be proven that Bolsonaro didn’t do anything illegal,” the leader of Mr Bolsonaro’s political party, Valdemar Costa Neto, wrote on Twitter.

The police statement said that the insertion of false data occurred between November 2021 and December 2022, and enabled the people whose vaccine cards were altered to comply with the US vaccine requirement to enter the country.

The investigation indicates the the objective was to “sustain the discourse aimed at attacking the vaccine against Covid-19”, the statement said.