SAO PAULO/BRASILIA (Reuters) -Brazil’s former President Jair Bolsonaro was charged on Tuesday over a plot to overturn his 2022 election loss, the office of the country’s top prosecutor said on Tuesday, in the latest legal setback for the far-right leader.
Prosecutor General Paulo Gonet filed the charges against the former president and 33 other people, including a few of Bolsonaro’s former ministers as well as an ex-Navy chief, with Brazil’s Supreme Court.
“The responsibility for acts harmful to the democratic order falls upon a criminal organization led by Jair Messias Bolsonaro, based on an authoritarian project of power,” according to the charging document, which used the ex-president’s full name.
It is considered unlikely that Bolsonaro will be arrested before his trial unless Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who is overseeing the case, deems him a flight risk.
The charges come just months after the federal police concluded a two-year investigation into Bolsonaro’s role in the election-denying movement that culminated in the riots by his supporters that swept the capital, Brasilia, in January 2023, a week after President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva took office.
The leftist Lula narrowly defeated Bolsonaro in the late 2022 presidential election.
Bolsonaro, a former army captain, has repeatedly denied breaking any laws, and calls allegations against him a witch hunt by his political opponents.
A lawyer representing the former president did not immediately responded to a request for comment.
The charges represent a fresh blow for Bolsonaro that further complicate his already narrow hopes of a political comeback.
Tuesday’s indictment marks the first time the beleaguered right-wing populist has been charged with a crime, though he has faced several legal challenges to his conduct as president since he lost his bid for reelection.
Two previous court decisions have already blocked him from running for president in 2026.
(Reporting Manuela Andreoni, Luciana Magalhaes, Andre Romani nad Isabel Teles in Sao Paulo, and Lisandra Paraguassu in Brasilia; Editing by Chris Reese, David Alire Garcia and Gerry Doyle)
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