Brazil’s intelligence agency was illegally weaponised during Jair Bolsonaro’s far-right administration to monitor and harass some of the country’s most important politicians, journalists, judges and environmental officials, federal police have alleged.
Five people were arrested on Thursday as part of a long-running investigation into suspicions that during Bolsonaro’s 2019-22 government the Agência Brasileira de Inteligência (Abin) was used to spy on the president’s political foes.
According to a 187-page police document, the targets included some of Brazil’s best-known public figures and politicians from across the political spectrum.
Those targeted allegedly include: the head of Brazil’s lower house, Arthur Lira, and his predecessor, Rodrigo Maia; prominent allies of the current leftwing president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, including the senator, Randolfe Rodrigues; conservative figures including the former governor of São Paulo state, João Doria; four supreme court judges; two prominent political journalists, Vera Magalhães and Mônica Bergamo; and two senior officials from the environmental protection agency, Ibama, Hugo Loss and Roberto Cabral.
Federal police claimed that under the watch of Bolsonaro’s spy chief, Alexandre Ramagem, a “criminal organisation of high offensive capability” was set up within Abin.
That “parallel” intelligence agency allegedly used a series of clandestine techniques to gather information about people or groups considered adversaries or irritants. The fruits of that illegal work were allegedly transformed into online disinformation designed to hurt the reputations of the organisation’s targets and Brazil’s democratic institutions. Members of the covert unit are also accused of targeting Internal Revenue Service officials who were investigating suspicions of corruption involving president Bolsonaro’s senator son, Flávio Bolsonaro.
A screenshot of a 2020 WhatsApp message sent by one arrested suspect shows the alleged head of the secret group telling a colleague: “We need to find dirt” [on a target].
Another message, from 2022, shows a police officer sending an alleged member of the group information about three environmental protection officials deemed to be “causing trouble for the administration”.
In a third, even more shocking exchange, the suspect and a military official rage against supreme court judge Alexandre de Moraes, who was credited with helping stave off a rightwing campaign to overthrow Brazil’s democratic system that culminated in the January 2023 attacks in Brasília.
“This is getting fucked up. This baldy is asking for a little extra,” one of them writes. “Just 7.62,” the other replies – an apparent reference to the 7.62mm rifle used by Brazil’s armed forces. The first person replies in English: “Head shot.”
Those named by police as targets reacted with anger and shock.
Rodrigo Maia condemned what he called “the behaviour of a totalitarian and criminal government, typical of the worst of dictatorships”.
Randolfe Rodrigues, who was the vice-president of a congressional inquiry into the Bolsonaro administration’s highly controversial handling of a Covid outbreak which claimed more than 700,000 lives, called the revelations “tragic”.
“While Brazilians were dying, the previous government – instead of using its time to buy vaccines – used its time to persecute and monitor the regime’s political adversaries,” he told reporters.
Another target, senator Renan Calheiros, lamented the intelligence agency’s “criminal capture” and the use of “Gestapo methods”.
Flávio Bolsonaro denied any knowledge of the alleged scheme. “Quite simply I had no relationship with Abin,” he tweeted, claiming the accusations were an attempt to scupper former spy chief Ramagem’s Bolsonaro-backed campaign to become Rio’s next mayor. Ramagem has yet to comment on Thursday’s police claims but has previously denied being responsible for an illegal spying scheme during his time at Abin.
