Brazilian Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF) Justice Flávio Dino opened an inquiry this week against former President Jair Bolsonaro and his three oldest sons over alleged irregular practices during the Bolsonaro administration’s handling of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, local outlets reported on Thursday.
Dino’s new judicial action against Bolsonaro, Brazilian media detailed, also targets Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, Congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro, Councilman Carlos Bolsonaro, and some 20 other individuals ranging from former government officials to lawmakers and journalists.
The inquiry stems from a petition from the Brazilian Federal Police, which reportedly requested in late 2024 that the STF authorize a police investigation based on a 1,180-page report presented by a Parliamentary Inquiry Commission (CPI) in the Brazilian Senate in 2021.
The report claims that Bolsonaro and dozens of others who were part of his administration allegedly committed several crimes in their handling of the pandemic. The report recommended that Bolsonaro be indicted by Brazilian authorities on charges of malfeasance, “charlatanism,” epidemic resulting in death, violation of preventive health measures, irregular use of public funds, incitement to crime, forgery of private documents, “crimes of responsibility,” and “crimes against humanity in the form of extermination, persecution, and other inhumane acts.”
The Brazilian Senate commission argued that the recommended indictments listed in its report were related to “denialism regarding the virus and vaccines, which is believed to have increased the number of deaths in Brazil; to suspicions of corruption in negotiations for the purchase of vaccines by the Ministry of Health; and to deaths believed to have been caused by the use of scientifically unsupported treatments against COVID-19.”
Despite the Senate CPI’s claims against Bolsonaro contained in the 2021 report, the Office of the Prosecutor General of Brazil determined in July 2022 that there was insufficient evidence to justify opening an investigation against Bolsonaro based on the report’s allegations.
“From the analysis of this petition, it appears that the legal requirements necessary for the initiation of a Police Investigation are present, so that the facts dealt with in the case files can be investigated,” Dino’s court order read.
“I emphasize that the parliamentary investigation pointed to evidence of crimes against the Public Administration, notably in contracts, bid rigging, overbilling, embezzlement of public funds, signing contracts with ‘front’ companies for the provision of generic or fictitious services, among other illegal acts mentioned in the CPI report,” the document continued.
Dino approved the Federal Police’s request and gave it an “initial” 60-day period for its investigations against Jair Bolsonaro and all other individuals listed in the petition.
The new inquiry against Jair Bolsonaro is the latest in a years-long string of judicial actions against the former president since he left office in January 2023 and comes days after the STF convicted and sentenced him to 27 years and three months in prison for “crimes against democracy.” The STF ruled that Bolsonaro was guilty of leading a “coup” plot to overturn the results of the 2022 presidential election, which he narrowly lost to current radical leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Roughly a week after the conviction, a Brazilian federal court imposed a roughly $188,750 fine on Bolsonaro for allegedly engaging in “recreational racism” through “racist” remarks issued in 2021 about Maicon Sulivan, a staunch supporter of the former president who never accused Bolsonaro of racism. This week, Bolsonaro’s chief medical officer Dr. Cláudio Birolini revealed that Bolsonaro was diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma, an “intermediate” form of skin cancer, after he had eight skin lesions surgically removed from his body on Sunday.
Former President Bolsonaro is legally unable to publicly comment on the new inquiry against him after STF Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered the police place him under a strict house arrest in August and forbade him from issuing statements of any kind or even use of any type of phone device.
Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, one of the former president’s sons also targeted by the inquiry, responded in a note, writing, “Shame on you, Dino.” The younger Bolsonaro accompanied the statement with an image containing past headlines taken from the STF’s website and Brazilian outlets detailing instances in which the STF and the prosecutor general archived or dismissed inquiries against Bolsonaro related to the handling of the pandemic between 2020 and 2023.
“Okay, they’ve put me in another investigation… democratically: now derived from that COVID CPMI! Let’s go for unshakeable democracy,” Councilman Carlos Bolsonaro wrote on social media.
Justice Flávio Dino is the newest member of the Brazilian top court, having joined it in 2024 after previously serving as President Lula’s justice minister. Dino was also a member of the Communist Party of Brazil for 15 years until 2021, when he switched to the Brazilian Socialist Party. In August, Dino issued a ruling forbidding Brazilian banks from complying with judicial and executive orders by foreign governments without prior STF authorization. That move reportedly aims to protect Justice Alexandre de Moraes after the United States imposed human right sanctions on him under the Global Magnitsky Act in response to de Moraes’ persecution and censorship campaigns against Jair Bolsonaro, his allies, and other conservative voices in Brazil.
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