The Brazilian Federal Police accused the former president of planning a coup d’état. The plan contemplated the assassination of President Lula da Silva, his vice-president, and a Supreme Court minister. General Walter Braga Netto, who was captured in Copabacana last December, is a main target of the investigation

Por: Juliana Dal Piva (CLIP)

It was 5:30 in the morning of Saturday, December 14, 2024. A dozen soldiers arrived to the headquarters of the Federal Police Superintendence, in downtown Rio de Janeiro. They were carrying out orders from the military leadership in Brasilia, the capital of Brazil, but at the time they still did not know what their mission was. There was one colonel; the other officers had lower ranks.

As they arrived at the Federal Police (PF) headquarters in Rio, they were met by a group of police officers who had to comply with an order issued by Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes. The military men only had the role of accompanying the operation since a high-ranking military officer was to be arrested, as the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism (CLIP) was able to reconstruct after obtaining accounts of the operations from two sources, who spoke under condition of anonymity.

None of the soldiers knew it, but they were on their way to the apartment of General Walter Braga Netto, former Minister of Defense and former vice-presidential candidate with Jair Bolsonaro’s in 2022. A native of Belo Horizonte, capital of the state of Minas Gerais, the 67-year-old military officer joined the army in 1975. Thirty minutes later, Braga Netto was arrested.

The federal police officers in charge of the operation told the soldiers that only some members of the group would travel with them. They were divided into two cars and instructed to execute a secret, agile, and discreet operation. Everything had been prepared in advance.

The police had been setting up everything since the day before, Friday the 13th. The general was on vacation in Maceió, northeastern Brazil, so the arrest was finally executed on Saturday. Braga Netto was already being followed during his vacation. PF agents accompanied him on his return flight to Rio de Janeiro and monitored his arrival. A vehicle also followed him from the airport until he arrived at his home at Friday night — an apartment in Rua Figueiredo Magalhães, one of the most traditional streets of the famous Copacabana neighborhood. They wanted to make sure that the next morning’s operation would be flawless.

So, the agents split up on Saturday morning in two cars without license plates and headed for the building known as “El Cid”, where General Braga Netto lives with his family. As soon as they arrived at the place, the policemen — who did know who they were going to arrest — could not help but think about the coincidence. The general was going to be arrested in large part due to the information provided by Lieutenant Colonel Mauro Cid, former advisor to Jair Bolsonaro, in his guilty plea. The military, on the other hand, only learned that they were going to arrest a general when they arrived at the door of Braga Netto’s apartment.

The group entered through the garage, telling the janitor they were acting upon a court order and demanding him not to warn the general about their presence. The building has an ancient, classic architecture, with one apartment per floor. Two elevators offer service to the residents. Half of the group went up in the main elevator, which has a door leading directly to Braga Netto’s apartment entrance; and the rest of the group used the service elevator.

One policeman rang the doorbell. General Braga Netto, dressed in white and blue shorts and pajama shirt, opened the door. The dialogue, described to CLIP by two sources who witnessed it, went through a few minutes:

—Good morning General, we are here to comply with a decision of Judge Alexandre de Moraes. It is a search warrant and a preventive detention order.

The general then replied:

—Preventive detention? But they didn’t even call me to testify.

—You will have to consult with your lawyer. I intend to be quick and discreet to preserve your reputation —added the policeman.

—Did they also go to Heleno’s house? —asked Braga Netto, without mentioning Bolsonaro.

Augusto Heleno was a minister in Bolsonaro’s Institutional Security Cabinet. In a document found by the Federal Police, he and Braga Netto were singled out  as the leaders of the transitional cabinet that would take over the country after the coup was consummated, which had been planned Bolsonaro’s defeat in the 2022 elections.

—Can I contact my lawyer? —asked the general.

—You can do it. Let me see the weapons —replied one of the policemen.

—Last time they took the guns away—recalled Braga Netto, mentioning the two guns seized in February, in another major police operation to investigate the coup attempt.

Shortly after the military and policemen entered the apartment, the general asked for authorization to call his lawyer. The investigators then seized his cell phone and began searching the property for documents, weapons, and money. The noise of the group’s arrival spread through the house and woke up the general’s wife, daughter, and son-in-law, who entered the living room. They told the three to sit on the sofa while Braga Netto changed clothes to behanded to the police.

No one cried. Everyone was upset, but no one despaired in front of the police and military. Braga Netto took about 40 minutes to shower and prepare to leave. Meanwhile, the military men accompanying the operation expressed their embarrassment at arresting a general. One of them went so far as to say that it was the most difficult mission he had received in his career.

When Braga Netto walked out the front door with the investigators —he was not handcuffed— he went directly to one of the cars in the garage.  He sat in the back seat and positioned himself between two police officers, like any other arrested person.

On the way from Copacabana to downtown, the group took on some conversation to relieve some tension. First, they talked about the Botafogo soccer club. The general is a fan of the team, which won the Copa Libertadores in 2024. Then, he complained about the army and criticized a military pension project. They arrived to the city center in 20 minutes.

The general’s detention was formalized at the Superintendence of the Federal Police. He was transferred to a room and waived his right to a forensic examination to avoid exposure. The order to avoid any public show was followed to the letter — so much so that there are no pictures of the moment he left his Copacabana home with the police. Only one photo was taken, when Braga Netto arrived at the Superintendence of the PF.

While the police went about their business, the general had a cup of coffee and was received by the acting superintendent. This, however, generated new outbursts:

—I was treated better by the police than by the Army. They put a “sacahumo” to arrest me — questioned Braga Netto, complaining that it was a colonel who led the arrest, a rank lower than his. The absence of a general, with a rank equal to his own, caused Braga Netto enormous irritation.

Troops used to smoke cigars or cigarettes during their military marches, so the youngest officer of a Cavalry Regiment was in charge of chopping the rolled tobacco and preparing it for his commander and superior officers. From then on, “sacahumo”, or “smoker”, was the name given to the young lieutenants by more experienced officers.

Sources also noted other absences. During his arrest, the general did not mention the name of Jair Bolsonaro. They also said they believe Braga Netto expected his detention order, and was already pondering his options.

After the initial paperwork, Federal Police handed the general over to the military authorities so that the Army could take custody of him, as ordered from Brasilia. With that, the operation was finally over, after days of tension.

After the Supreme Federal Court issued the arrest warrant, the investigators had doubts about the right moment to comply. They concluded that arresting Braga Netto on December 13 could be interpreted as a provocation, since it was the anniversary of Institutional Act 5, a decree from the dictatorship days that allowed a series of arbitrary arrests, leading the country to a period of widespread violence by the military regime, starting from December 1968.

However, Saturday, December 14 is the birthday of former President Dilma Rousseff, a militant of the Workers’ Party and former member of one of the armed guerrillas against the dictatorship. The police officers wanted to comply with the orders without media attention to avoid political accusations, but they concluded that there was no perfect date to avoid a political fallout.

Thus, Braga Netto was sent to the 1st Army Division, part of the Eastern Military Command and located in Vila Militar, in the western part of the city. Few officers know those facilities as well as Braga Netto, who led the institution between 2016 and 2019.

His arrest was the first in Brazil’s democratic history against a four-star General, the highest rank a general can reach in the Army before retirement. Marshal Hermes da Fonseca, who held a rank one step higher than Braga Netto, was arrested twice in 1922. But the Brazil of the 1920s is not comparable to that of 2024. Braga Netto was widely investigated in a democratic country, something that cannot be said of the beginning of Brazil’s republican period.

Braga Netto is entitled to a defense and denies all accusations, although it is very difficult to imagine what kind of defense will he be able to hold after the Federal Police uncovered evidence of his involvement in a plot to assassinate the president-elect, his vice president, and a Supreme Court judge.

Braga Netto’s arrest is the most serious outcome so far of the investigations into a coup attempt in Brazil after Bolsonaro’s defeat by Lula in the November 2022 elections. Following a two-years investigation, the PF decided on November 21, 2024, to indict former president Bolsonaro and 39 other people.

The 884-page PF investigation describes documents found in cell phones, pen-drives and computers that show how, between November and December 2022, some of the main leaders of the Brazilian Armed Forces allegedly planned a coup that considered the likely assassination of President Lula, Vice President Geraldo Alckmin, and Alexandre de Moraes, a Supreme Court minister.

Braga Netto is a main target of this investigation. In ordering his arrest, investigators noted that whistleblower Mauro Cid reported witnessing Braga Netto handing over cash in a box of wine to finance the operation. Two sources close to the investigation revealed that Braga Netto tried to procure money within the Liberal Party to fund the military officers who were preparing the plan, which was due to be executed on December 15, 2022. However, out of concerns of arousing suspicion, Braga Netto chose to obtain money from agribusinessmen, according to the investigators’ reconstruction.

In Brazil, the indictment is a step prior to the filing of criminal charges, which is carried out by the Attorney General’s Office. The investigation could lead Bolsonaro to become the first president in the country’s history to be subject to a process to be held accountable for an attempted coup against democracy. He could also become the first in Latin America to be convicted for using disinformation as part of an attack against democracy.

Infography: Gabriela Garzón

“Green and Yellow Dagger.”

Data found in the cell phones and computers of those investigated in Operation Tempus Veritatis show that on November 9, 2022, just five days after a YouTube broadcast made by Fernando Cerimedo, General Mário Fernandes, former deputy chief of the General Secretariat of the Presidency, printed a document containing a plan to describe armed actions aimed at preventing Lula’s inauguration, i.e., a coup d’état. According to investigations, the document was to be presented to General Braga Netto.

The Federal Police report describes that the Executive Secretary of the General Secretariat of the Presidency, General Mário Fernandes, drafted the document, called ‘yellow-green dagger’ on November 9, 2022, at the Planalto Palace, headquarters of the Presidency of the Republic. Data obtained from cell phone antennas show that Jair Bolsonaro was in the building at the time the file was printed.

The plan “describes the overthrow of the security structure of Minister Alexandre de Moraes, the means to be employed, and the final action of arresting/executing the minister”. The plan would have also established the possibility, among the actions of the “Kids Negros”, to assassinate the then president-elect Lula da Silva, through poisoning or use of chemicals, and the then vice-president-elect Geraldo Alckmin, with the aim of extinguishing the winning presidential candidacy.” “Kids Negros” is the nickname given to soldiers graduating from the Brazilian Army’s Special Operations course.

In a report, the PF points out that it also found data on the cell phones of those investigated about a meeting in Braga Netto’s apartment in Brasília, days after the elaboration of the plan.

On November 12, 2022, with the plan in place, General Braga Netto received Bolsonaro at his residence in Brasília. According to the testimony of Lieutenant Colonel Cid, Bolsonaro’s former advisor, the purpose of the meeting was to discuss the plan.

Cid also testified to the Police that, a few days later, he witnessed General Braga Netto hand him an amount of cash in a box of wine. The amount, which he could not specify, was intended to finance the execution of the “green and yellow dagger” plan.

Cid reported that Braga Netto tried to procure these monies from the Liberal Party. The objective, he said, was to use public funds that had been fraudulently deposited in the party’s accounts at the Electoral Court. However, the risks involved and the risk of being discovered dissuaded the general. Thus, according to Cid, the money was instead “obtained from people in agribusiness”. He did not reveal the names of the people who gave the money.

After the meeting held at Braga Netto’s house, the PF points out, based on the data found in the cell phones, the conspirators started distributing a document entitled “Copa 2022”, which they approved during the meeting to endorse the work of the “Black Kids” in the execution of the coup plan. The document even pointed out the initial needs for logistics and resources to finance the clandestine operation.

R$100 thousand

Prior to the discovery of this meeting and the delivery of the money, the Federal Police had already identified messages between Cid and another military officer, who expressed the need to raise close to 100,000 reais (US$ 20,000). The police identified an exchange of messages on WhatsApp on November 14, 2022 between Cid and Major Rafael Martins de Oliveira. Martins said he needed the money to cover expenses. Cid asked Martins to calculate the costs of hotels, food and supplies, and asked him if the sum of R$100,000 was enough. Martins answered yes, and then Cid asked him to bring people from Rio.

According to investigators, the amounts delivered by General Braga Netto were related to the need to obtain that 100,000 reais. The plan started to be implemented, as evidenced by messages on the officers’ cell phones, but was interrupted during its operation without a clear explanation. The suspicion is that support was lacking because two military commanders said no to Bolsonaro, as they said in their testimonies to the police.

Operation 142

In an excerpt from the report, the Federal Police provides details of some exceptional measures that were to be taken to prevent Lula’s inauguration. The ex-officials made clear how they wanted to disrupt the transition process through “Operation 142”.

The document, found in the desk of one Braga Netto’s aide during a search operation authorized by justice at the Liberal Party headquarters, describes that the plan had “the objective of subverting the democratic rule of law, using an anomalous interpretation of article 142 of the Federal Constitution, in an attempt to legitimize the coup d’état.”

It says that “Lula will not go up the ramp”, which is “a clear allusion to prevent the winner of the 2022 elections from assuming the presidency”. The coup plotters cited the annulment of the elections and preventing Lula from assuming the presidential office, suggesting that they drafted the document between November and December 2022.

Documents seized by the PF also show how Braga Netto and Augusto Heleno, former minister of the Institutional Security Cabinet, were to head a new cabinet to support Bolsonaro in the implementation of a coup decree, once the operation was consummated. The cabinet would articulate intelligence networks and communication strategies to gain national and international support.

Investigators also collected messages from Braga Netto pressuring Air Force and Army commanders to join the plan. Among the strategies of the “digital militia,” he allegedly encouraged public and personal attacks against generals who refused to join the plan and their families.

In a statement to the PF, both commanders said they were called to meetings with Bolsonaro to join the coup. They said, however, that they refused to act. Former Air Force commander Brigadier Carlos de Almeida Baptista Jr said that General Marco Antonio Freire Gomes, a former Army commander, threatened to arrest Bolsonaro if he gave orders to use troops in a coup.

Use of disinformation

The Federal Police documented in its report that the “attacks on (the trustworthiness of) electronic ballot boxes did not start after the second round of the 2022 presidential elections”. They point out that “the group had been propagating this idea since 2019?. The goal was to instill in the population the false reality of electoral fraud.” In case of a Bolsonaro defeat in 2022, the police argue, the group aimed to use this narrative as a basis for alleging fraud.

The police point out that those investigated “used the modus operandi of the so-called digital militia” throughout the process (Investigation 4874/DF). Thus, “the producers of false data disseminated in large volume, through multichannels, quickly, continuously and repeatedly, the idea that in both the 2018 and 2022 elections several vulnerabilities were identified in the electronic ballot boxes, which ‘would have revealed’ the architecture of a great fraud to harm Bolsonaro.”

The investigators denounced the existence of a criminal organization organized in six groups: the Center for Disinformation and Attacks to the Electoral System; the Center Responsible for Inciting the Military to Join the Coup; the Legal Center; the Operative Center for the Support of Coup Actions; the Parallel Intelligence Center; and the Operative Center for the Execution of Coercive Measures. So far, 40 people have been identified as members of the criminal organization.

The disinformation group includes, for example, Tércio Arnaud Thomaz, a member of the so-called “cabinet of hate,” a former special advisor to Jair Bolsonaro, and Argentine consultant Fernando Cerimedo, as reported by CLIP in April last year. Since 2018, reports have named Thomaz as one of Bolsonaro’s employees spreading false information and attacking opponents using anonymous profiles. In 2020, the Atlantic Council’s DFRLab had already identified him as a disseminator of disinformation in an operation flagged by Meta (then Facebook) at the time.

The Federal Police said it has collected messages and documents that show how “shortly after the end of the second round of the presidential elections, even knowing that there was no fraud in the elections held in 2022, the group responsible for promoting actions that could discredit the Brazilian electoral process, following the planning of the criminal enterprise, started to act more incisively, using the methodology developed by the digital militia to reverberate through multichannels the idea that the 2022 presidential elections were rigged, encouraging their followers to ‘resist’ in front of the barracks”.

Three military men started disseminating false studies, which were then taken by different actors, such as Cerimedo. “The same false content was used by the Argentine Fernando Cerimedo” to disseminate, through a live broadcast on November 4, 2022, “what he called an ‘investigation’ on the Brazilian elections indicating an alleged disparity in the systems of the 2020 ballot boxes, compared to the models of previous years.” None of these claims has any evidence to support it, as members of the group themselves commented in internal messages.

In addition to planning the coup, General Mário Fernandes was also caught directing how the messages on Jair Bolsonaro’s supporters’ placards were to be crafted. Shortly after his defeat in the elections, several Bolsonaro supporters occupied highways and set up camps in front of army barracks to protest alleged fraud.

The PF proved message exchanges on November 7, 2022, between Fernandes and other military men with a document titled “Faixas” (stripes). “The file contains phrases inside rectangles, with phrases such as “FREEDOM YES, CENSORSHIP NO”, “RESPECT FOR THE CONSTITUTION, PUBLIC VOTE COUNT”, “SOS ARMED FORCES”, “NO TO JUDICIAL DICTATORSHIP”, “NEW ELECTIONS FOR PRESIDENT”.

Lawyer José Luis Oliveira Lima, who joined Braga Netto’s defense team days after his arrest, said that “he never mentioned any irritation related to the execution of the prison order.” He also reported that the general “expressly denies having committed any illicit act, in particular the alleged delivery of cash.”

Questionnaires were sent on Tuesday, January 21, to lawyers of Mário Fernandes and former President Jair Bolsonaro, but no response had been received by the time of publication.