Bolsonaro government tried to link Lula to factions, says Supreme Court official

The testimony of a Ministry of Justice employee to the Supreme Federal Court reinforces the conviction that the government of Jair Bolsonaro (PL) used the state apparatus to try to link then-candidate Lula (PT) to criminal factions.

Clebson Ferreira testified this Monday the 14th as a witness in one of the criminal proceedings regarding the 2022 coup attempt. At the time of the last presidential elections, he was part of the ministry's Intelligence Secretariat.

The witness was questioned about a conversation with his then-wife regarding a request he had received. The task was to detail the statistical correlation of votes in faction-dominated areas, with the aim of identifying whether voting intentions for Lula were more significant in regions under the yoke of the Comando Vermelho.

“I remember mentioning that a request came in to try to see analysis and statistical correlation of the concentration of votes in Comando Vermelho territories in Rio de Janeiro , to see if there was a correlation, if candidate Lula had a greater concentration of votes in areas dominated by criminal factions,” said the deponent.

He also reported having received a request from the Ministry's Intelligence to analyze the concentrations of votes for Bolsonaro and Lula in order to identify where each of the then candidates would have at least 75% of the preference.

According to Ferreira, it was clear that the Federal Highway Police were acting differently in Lula's strongholds. "When I analyzed the data and filtered the upper 75%, there was a sea of red points in the Northeast, and my data scraping and reports of people being prevented from voting due to heavy traffic jams began to explode."

In the underworld of Bolsonarism, the strategy of linking Lula—without evidence—to criminal factions was a keynote of the 2022 election campaign. A lawsuit against Jair Bolsonaro is still pending in the ordinary courts of Rio de Janeiro, filed by a resident of Complexo do Alemão, in the state capital, seeking compensation after the former captain associated the acronym CPX with drug traffickers.

During the 2022 election, Lula was photographed wearing a cap with the acronym during a visit to the complex. Bolsonaro said his opponent was aligned with criminals and that "CPX" meant "cupinxa" (sic), meaning partner in crime.

At the time, far-right figures such as Senator Flávio Bolsonaro (PL-RJ) and former secretary and federal deputy Mario Frias (PL-SP) shared different versions of fake news on the subject.