Brazil, Bolsonaro investigated: “He covered system of bribes on the purchase of the anti-Covid vaccine”

Aware of suspects plots of corruption relating to the purchase of anti-covid vaccines would not lift a finger, allowing the hazy negotiations between businessmen, fixers, ministerial officials and politicians continued smoothly. For this the president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, will be formally investigated by Supreme Court federal (Stf) by omission in official acts (prevaricaçao). Should the investigation be concluded with evidence that Bolsonaro has committed a “crime of responsibility” for a “common” crime, would be the responsibility of the Senate initiate an impeachment process that could result in the president-elect being removed from office.

The turning point after a few weeks of political-judicial battle arrived this morning, when the Attorney General of the Republic (PgR) sent to the Supreme Court the request to open an investigation. The president is in fact suspected of hiding a system of bribes in the purchase of doses of the vaccine Covaxin, developed by the Indian pharmaceutical company Bharat Biotech. The contract, already suspended as a precaution by Ministry of Health, had become the subject of investigations by the ordinary judiciary last week. According to an initial reconstruction of the investigators, the government has in fact agreed to pay 15 dollars for each dose of vaccine, against a price estimated by the manufacturing industry of 1.34 dollars. For the search the deal would have procured a disproportionate advantage to the “Precisa medicamentos” company pharmaceutical Brazilian, representative of the Bharat in negotiations for the sale of vaccines to the government of the Brazil.

In particular, the position of Bolsonaro worsened after that during a hearing at the Parliamentary commission of inquiry (Cpi) on the alleged negligence of the government of the Brazil in the management of the health emergency linked to the pandemic, the deputy Luis Miranda he had accused the president of voluntarily ignoring his reports on the suspected price difference in the purchase that masked an alleged corruption scheme. In particular the deputy Miranda reported having heard from his brother Ricardo, official of the logistics department of the Ministry of Health, of the possibility of irregularities in the purchase of vaccines and to have promptly informed the President of the risk of a case of corruption in progress. The ministerial official had also confessed to his brother that he had been “pressured” for to accelerate the buying process. Pressed by the questions of the senators of the commission of inquiry, Miranda he had stated in tears that, in the face of this information, the president would have replied that the question of buying this vaccine was of interest to the representative of the government in the House, Ricardo Barros, then closing the discussion.

After the testimony of the deputy Miranda, the senators Randolfe Rodrigues, Jorge Kajuru e Fabiano Contarato had filed a complaint with the Supreme Court to ask for an investigation into the president. As per constitutional practice the judge Rosa Weber he had asked the attorney general for an opinion. For its part, in the first instance, the Pgr had asked to wait for the conclusion of the Cpi before opening a new line of formal investigation. However, in the opinion of Weber, the investigation of the parliamentary commission does not hinder the action of the prosecutor. Faced with this stance, the Pgr asked for the investigation to be initiated. Now it will be there Supreme Court to assess the position of the President.

However, this is not the only investigation linked to the purchase of vaccines by the government that sees the president at the center of the storm for omission in official acts. Search e cut supreme investigate a story that arose after the newspaper “Folha de S.Paulo” published an interview in which Luiz Paulo Dominguetti, representative of the Giving Medical Supply in Brazil, claimed that Roberto Days, director of the Logistics department of the Ministry of Health, would have asked for a bribe to lead the government to close the purchase of 400 million doses of the vaccine AstraZeneca. In detail, Days he would ask for a dollar for each dose included in the agreement. According to the reconstructions of the press also in this case Bolsonaro, informed of the story of which the then Minister of Health, the general, was also aware Eduardo Pazuello, had decided not to intervene.

Bolsonaro for its part, it has claimed its own strangeness to the accusations first defending himself (“I have no way of knowing what happens in the ministries. They are putting together a narrative that the government is involved in corruption cases”), then attacking (“It will not be with lies or with a CPI made up of 7 bandits , who will drive us out of here “).

Other formal accusations could however rain down on him at the end of the works of the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry on the Covid. After about two months of work by the 11 senators indicated to evaluate the negligence government in the pandemic, much evidence ‘with the force of law’ has already been gathered. From the idea of ​​modifying the leaflet illustrative of chloroquine by inserting the Covid among the diseases treatable with this drug, to the responsibilities of the former minister Pazuello in the collapse of hospitals in Amazonia, until the proof of the 101 email sent by Pfizer to the government with the proposed purchase of vaccines to which the executive never replied. Again, any responsibility of the president that should emerge from the final report should pass through the filter dell’impeachement in Parliament.

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