Bolsonaro denies “act of corruption” in his government when talking about Covaxin

RIO DE JANEIRO BRAZIL – President Jair Bolsonaro spoke today, June 24, about the process of acquiring Covaxin, a Covid-19 vaccine from India’s Bharat Biotech, now the target of an investigation by the Brazilian Senate’s Covid CPI after a denunciation of irregularities by federal deputy Luis Miranda and his brother, Luis Ricardo Miranda, an employee of the Ministry of Health.

Bolsonaro classified the story that appeared in the press as a “fabrication” and denied any act of corruption in his government. Yesterday, the secretary-general of the presidency, Onyx Lorenzoni, announced that the government would file a formal complaint against Luis Miranda, who confirmed that he had personally alerted Bolsonaro to contractual irregularities.

“To the chagrin of a few, [it is] a government that completes two and a half years without a single allegation of corruption. So there is no point in inventing a vaccine because we have not even received a dose of it.”

“We have an obligation: if something is wrong, we will find out but thank God, so far, thanks to the quality of our ministers, we have not had a single case of corruption in two and a half years,” the president explained during an event in Jucurutu, in Rio Grande do Norte.

The Federal Prosecutor’s Office (MPF) decided on Wednesday to forward to the criminal area part of the investigation surrounding the purchase of the Indian Covaxin vaccine by the Bolsonaro government.

Federal District Prosecutor Luciana Loureiro Oliveira saw evidence of a crime in the contracting and pointed to “interests divergent from the public interest.” The price paid for the product, US$15 per dose, was 1,000% higher than estimated by the manufacturer itself 6 months before the purchase.

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