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Federal police have raided Jair Bolsonaro’s Brasília mansion, banned him from communicating with foreign diplomats and ordered him to wear an electronic ankle tag amid fears Brazil’s ex-president might abscond to avoid punishment over an alleged coup attempt.
A supreme court trial examining claims that Bolsonaro masterminded a murderous plot to seize power after losing the 2022 election is expected to reach its conclusion in the coming weeks.
A guilty verdict is widely seen as a foregone conclusion and political opponents have voiced concern that the far-right politician might try to dodge a sentence of up to 43 years by seeking refuge in a foreign embassy or even trying to leave the country. In February last year, Bolsonaro spent two nights inside the Hungarian embassy in the capital, Brasília, after federal police seized his passport.
Fears that Bolsonaro might flee abroad have intensified in recent days after Donald Trump announced he would impose 50% tariffs on Brazil as a result of what he called the “witch hunt” against his rightwing ally. On Thursday, the US president published a letter to Bolsonaro on social media in which he denounced the “terrible treatment” he claimed his ally was receiving from the Brazilian government.
Hours after the White House’s two-paragraph note of support, heavily armed federal police agents arrived outside Bolsonaro’s home in a palm-lined upmarket corner of the capital called Botanical Garden.
Police confirmed the operation in a brief statement that said two search warrants had been executed and “preventative measures” imposed.
The statement made no mention of what those restrictions might be, but local media reports said they included obliging Bolsonaro to wear a monitoring tag on his ankle, ordering him to remain at home between 7pm and 7am and on weekends and forbidding him from speaking to foreign ambassadors or diplomats or visiting diplomatic compounds.
Bolsonaro was also banned from using social media, where he has millions of followers.
The television network TV Globo claimed police had found $14,000 in cash during their search of Bolsonaro’s two-storey villa. A USB flash drive that had allegedly been “hidden in the bathroom” was also reportedly seized.
Federal police are investigating what role, if any, Bolsonaro had in convincing Trump to hit Brazil with 50% tariffs in an apparent attempt to pressure Brazilian authorities into dropping the charges against Bolsonaro or pardoning him. His congressman son, Eduardo Bolsonaro, travelled to the US in February and has reportedly spent recent weeks lobbying Trump administration officials to impose sanctions on Alexandre de Moraes, the high-profile supreme court judge presiding over the investigation into his father. Eduardo Bolsonaro celebrated Trump’s tariffs last week, tweeting: “THANK YOU PRESIDENT TRUMP – MAKE BRAZIL FREE AGAIN.”
But if Trump’s politically motivated trade war was designed to help the Bolsonaros, it appears to have backfired.
Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva – whom Bolsonaro allegedly conspired against to stop him taking office – has enjoyed a bounce in the polls, which analysts have attributed to his handling of the crisis. On Thursday night, Lula gave a televised address to the nation in which he attacked Trump’s “unacceptable blackmail” and painted the politicians who supported it as “traitors to the nation”. “Trying to meddle in the Brazilian judicial system represents a serious attack on national sovereignty,” Lula said.
Speaking to reporters after the raid on his home, Bolsonaro denied leading a conspiracy to prevent Lula taking power by staging a military coup. The ex-president also denied that he was considering fleeing abroad. “I have never thought about leaving Brazil. I have never thought about going into a [foreign] embassy,” Bolsonaro said, although he admitted he had been planning to lunch with a group of ambassadors next week. “I won’t go anymore,” he said, describing the police operation as “supreme humiliation”.
In a statement, Bolsonaro’s lawyer, Celso Vilardi, voiced “surprise and anger” over the “severe” restrictions imposed upon his client.
