Former Bolsonaro official arrested live in Congress for corruption

Dias was sacked last month from the health ministry and is the first Bolsonarist jailed for corruption for perjury on the Senate committee of inquiry, to which he testified as a witness and under oath.

The former official had been accused by a Minas Gerais state police officer and a representative of a US medical supplies company, Davati, of asking him for a dollar bribe for AstraZeneca vaccines, in an episode that has not yet been fully elucidated.

“The witness is being held for lying, for perjury. Any witness who lies will have the same fate as him. This commission is not a game,” Aziz warned after ordering the arrest live in front of the television cameras which broadcast the session.

The ruling party’s reaction was immediate.

Bolsonarist senators have called the arrest of the former official, who came to power in 2019 at the hands of politicians linked to the parliamentary base of the government, “illegal”.

Although this case caused the first arrest, it is neither the only nor the most important the legislative committee is investigating.

Last Friday, the Federal Supreme Court opened an investigation against Bolsonaro himself for the offense of prevarication for failing to make the police report when a deputy informed him, during a meeting in his presidential office, that there was overcharging in a contract to purchase Covaxin vaccines from India.