Brazilian police have raided the premises of several prominent business supporters of president Jair Bolsonaro days after leaked messages appeared to show the men backing a coup d’état if the far-right leader loses his re-election bid in October.
Acting on an order from Supreme Court justice Alexandre de Moraes, who also heads the country’s electoral court, federal police on Tuesday launched a search operation in eight premises in five states, including São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.
The move highlights the growing sensitivity of the court towards threats to Brazil’s democracy ahead of what is expected to be a highly polarised election.
For more than a year Bolsonaro, a former army captain, has raised doubts about whether he would respect the result of the polls, saying multiple times that “only God can take me” from the presidency.
He has also repeatedly questioned Brazil’s electronic voting system, saying without evidence that it is prone to fraud. In an interview with local media on Monday night he said he would respect the result “as long as the vote is clean and transparent”.
The president is trailing his main rival, leftwing former leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, by 15 percentage points, according to a Datafolha poll last week.
The operation on Tuesday was launched after media group Metropoles last week published WhatsApp messages appearing to show several supporters of the president calling for a coup if Bolsonaro lost the election.
“I prefer a coup than the return of [Lula’s Workers’ party]. A million times. And certainly no one will stop doing business with Brazil. They do [business] with various dictatorships around the world,” José Koury, a real estate tycoon, purportedly wrote in the messages.
Koury was among the targets of the raid. He could not be reached for comment. Also targeted were Luciano Hang, a prominent billionaire supporter of Bolsonaro, and Afrânio Barreira, owner of a popular restaurant chain.
Hang denied supporting a coup, blaming what he called “militant media” for the scandal. Barreira said he “never defended, thought or wrote in favour of any anti-democratic or ‘coup’ movement. I am in favour of freedom, democracy and a fair electoral process.
In addition to the raid justice de Moraes ordered the blocking of the men’s banks accounts and their social media networks.
"The question now is how Bolsonaro will react,” said Lucas de Aragão, a partner at political consultancy Arko Advice. “We saw him recently trying to escape the ideological messages and move towards more political messages, with a focus on inflation, fuel, things like that. We will have to see [what he does now].”