Police in Brazil raided the home and offices of former president Jair Bolsonaro’s son Carlos on Monday as an investigation into accusations of illegal spying closed in on the far-right leader’s inner circle.
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The probe involves accusations Brazil’s state spy agency illegally compiled intelligence and tracked the geolocation data of hundreds of perceived Bolsonaro opponents during his 2019-2022 presidency.
Federal police said they had carried out nine search and seizure warrants in the latest phase of their investigation into a “criminal organization set up in the Brazilian Intelligence Agency (Abin) to illegally monitor public officials and others.”
The raids were authorized by Supreme Court justice and electoral court chief Alexandre de Moraes, who was himself an alleged target of the espionage.
His decision named Carlos Bolsonaro, a Rio de Janeiro city councilor and the second of Bolsonaro’s four sons, as a probe target.
Carlos Bolsonaro’s home and his offices at Rio city hall were searched in the raids.
Police said they had also targeted addresses in the capital, Brasilia, the nearby city of Formosa, the northeastern city of Salvador and resort town Angra dos Reis, 150 kilometers (95 miles) west of Rio.
Globo News TV showed the former president, 68, and Carlos Bolsonaro, 41, outside a house in Angra dos Reis as federal officers departed.
Investigators allege Abin used Israeli-made surveillance software known as FirstMile, which tracks cell phone geolocation data, and other intelligence gathering to illegally spy on figures including supreme court justices, the former lower-house speaker and a state governor.
Moraes’s ruling authorizing the raids cited a WhatsApp message that an aide to Carlos Bolsonaro allegedly sent in February 2020 to an assistant to Ramagem, then Abin’s director, asking for information on investigations “involving the president and three of his sons.” ■