Justice authorizes disclosure of Bolsonaro’s financial, banking records

Increasingly pressured by investigations into the sale of official gifts and the investigations made by the investigative parliamentary committee CPMI on January 8 coup-mongering acts, former President Jair Mr. Bolsonaro was the target on Thursday of a series of accusations by hacker Walter Mr. Delgatti. In a testimony of about seven hours at the CPMI, he reported that Mr. Bolsonaro asked him to forge the invasion of electronic voting machines to cast doubt on the electoral system.

According to the affidavit, the plan was discussed in meetings at the Ministry of Defense on the orders of the former president. The hacker also said that the former president asked him, with the promise of a future pardon, to claim responsibility for an alleged wiretap against Justice Alexandre de Moraes, of the Federal Supreme Court (STF).

On another front, according to the magazine Veja, the new lawyer of Lieutenant Colonel Mauro Cid, Mr. Bolsonaro’s former aide, said that his client intends to confess to the court that he participated in the sale in the United States of the jewelry given to the Brazilian state, arranged the transfer to Brazil of the money collected and delivered it to Jair Mr. Bolsonaro. According to the lawyer Cezar Bitencourt, the resources would have been delivered in kind to leave no trace of the former president, on the orders of Mr. Bolsonaro himself, who would be the mastermind of the scheme. The information was first given to Veja and confirmed by him, then to O Globo.

Also, according to the news story, Mr. Cid came up with the solution of using a bank account in the U.S. in the name of his father, General Mauro Lourena Cid, to receive payments for the jewelry sold. With the confession, the defense strategy would be to mitigate Mr. Cid’s potential sentence. On cable news channel GloboNews, journalist Eliane Cantanhêde reported that Justice Moraes had authorized the disclosure of financial and banking records of Mr. Bolsonaro and former first lady Michelle Bolsonaro.

Already in the CPMI, Mr. Delgatti did not present evidence to support his claims but stressed that he would be “quite calm” to meet the former president face to face, which will be requested by government officials. In detailed testimony, considered “fanciful” by Mr. Bolsonaro, he listed names of possible witnesses to the meetings. The hacker, who is under arrest, will give new testimony to the Federal Police this Friday morning.

Faced with the information, the pro-government members of the commission rushed to pass the disclosure of the former president’s telematic and fiscal records and also of former first lady Michelle. It is also in the plans to send the testimony to the Prosecutor General’s Office (PGR) to analyze and refer to the courts for a possible plea bargain agreement.

Behind the scenes, Mr. Delgatti’s statements have been viewed with concern by those around the former president. Government officials believe that the revelations will help strengthen the need for Mr. Bolsonaro’s arrest.

At the beginning of the testimony, Mr. Delgatti claimed that the former president’s campaign devised a plan for the hacker to make an electronic voting machine work with a fake source code in order to prove that it was possible to manipulate votes. According to Mr. Delgatti, the intention was to release a video during the September 7th celebrations, less than a month before the presidential election.

He said he even attended a meeting on August 9 last year with Liberal Party leader Valdemar Costa Neto, deputy Carla Zambelli and the campaign’s spin doctor, Duda Lima, to work out the details. The plan was not put into practice, according to the hacker, because his meeting with the former president was leaked to the press.

The idea was to borrow an electronic voting machine from the Brazilian Bar Association (OAB) so that the hacker could make an application and “show the population that it is possible to press the vote for one candidate and record it to another”. The OAB said in a statement that the entity does not have electronic voting machines and added that it did not hold elections last year and therefore did not have access to the equipment, which is usually lent by the courts for internal elections of the Bar.

One of these meetings would have been with the former Minister of Defense, Paulo Sérgio Nogueira. According to the hacker, the Armed Forces’ report to the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) with questions about the fairness of the electronic voting machines was based on his information.

The hacker said he had a second contact with Mr. Bolsonaro. According to him, it was by phone and mediated by Ms. Zambelli. Mr. Bolsonaro would have asked him to take responsibility for the wiretapping against Justice Moraes. “According to him [Mr. Bolsonaro], this wiretap had already been carried out, there would be compromising conversations from the Justice, and he needed me to claim responsibility.”

Mr. Delgatti said he accepted the mission because it was a request from the president, but that he later did not know if there was actually a recording of the conversation. The wiretap, according to the report, would have been made by international agents. Soon after, the hacker said that Mr. Bolsonaro had assured that he would give a pardon in case of conviction of justice for committing the crime. “He still said, ‘Look, if someone arrests you, I’ll have the judge arrested,” Mr. Delgatti said. He then said the former president laughed after making the promise.

In the testimony, the only right-wing lawmaker Mr. Delgatti responded to was Senator Sergio Moro, former judge of Operation Car Wash. The lawmaker used the time to say that the hacker was a fraud. At that point, Moro was confronted: “I have read your conversations and I can tell you that you are a hardened criminal,” Mr. Delgatti countered. Mr. Moro retorted that the bandit was Mr. Delgatti.

The opposition tried to disqualify the witness. Mr. Delgatti was called a “coward,” a “fraud,” a “liar” and a “criminal.” Arrested earlier this month in a Federal Police operation for infiltrating the system of the National Council of Justice (CNJ), the hacker repeated what he had told the authorities a day earlier. He said that Deputy Carla Zambelli had asked him to infiltrate any system of the judiciary, for R$40,000.

Mr. Bolsonaro’s defense said that Mr. Delgatti’s statements were lies. Ms. Zambelli’s defense called them “fantasies”. Spin doctor Mr. Lima denied attending any meetings. Valor did not get a response from former minister Paulo Sérgio Nogueira.