Federal police agents have raided the home and offices of Brazil’s spy chief under the former president Jair Bolsonaro as part of an investigation into the alleged illegal monitoring of thousands of people, including two supreme court judges and a key ally of the current president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Alexandre Ramagem, a former federal police chief who ran Brazil’s intelligence agency, Abin, during Bolsonaro’s 2019-22 administration, was targeted as part of an inquiry into a “criminal organisation” that allegedly used Israeli spyware to track Bolsonaro’s political foes.
Six mobile phones, four laptops and 20 data storage devices were reportedly seized from Ramagem’s flat in the capital, Brasília, including a phone and a laptop belonging to Abin, for which he no longer works. Computers and documents were taken from his office.
Ramagem, 51, a congressman for Bolsonaro’s rightwing Liberal party, made no immediate comment on Thursday’s raids, which Bolsonaro called “relentless persecution”.
Reports in the Brazilian press say the investigation is focused on a secretive unit allegedly set up within Abin during Bolsonaro’s government called the National Intelligence Centre. The centre is said to have been created in July 2020, tasked with gathering intelligence on supposed “threats to state security and stability”. According to Folha de São Paulo, the unit was staffed with federal police agents close to Ramagem and the Bolsonaro family and became known as Brazil’s “parallel intelligence agency”.
Federal police suspect that the group – which investigators have reportedly nicknamed Abin’s “tracking gang” – was using spying software called FirstMile made by the Israeli firm Cognyte to illegally snoop on government opponents.
The website of the Tel Aviv-based company says it specialises in “threat intelligence analytics” and offers “analytics solutions designed to empower investigation & SOC [security operations centre] teams with actionable insights to detect and mitigate threats effectively”.
FirstMile can reportedly be used to track the mobile phones and tablets of targets by inputting their contact numbers into a system.
Cognyte did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Guardian. Ramagem’s chief of staff said the politician had yet to issue a statement on the police operation. The chief of staff did not reply when asked if Ramagem denied claims that he had been part of a “criminal” group engaged in illegal monitoring operations.
Speaking to the television network GloboNews earlier this month, the head of Brazil’s federal police, Andrei Rodrigues, estimated that the group had snooped on about 30,000 people without judicial authorisation. Information about the whereabouts of those targets was stored at datacentres in Israel, Rodrigues said.
Most of the group’s alleged targets have yet to be identified, although they reportedly include civil servants, journalists, judges, lawyers, politicians and police officers. But on Thursday newspaper reports suggested they included two supreme court judges, Alexandre de Moraes and Gilmar Mendes, and Camilo Santana, a former state governor from Lula’s leftwing Workers’ party. Santana became education minister last January after Lula beat Bolsonaro in the 2022 presidential election.
Moraes, Mendes and Santana were all outspoken critics of Bolsonaro and his far-right administration. O Globo reported that one document discovered by investigators suggested there had been a plot to gather intelligence supposedly indicating a link between an organised crime group and the two supreme court judges in an attempt to create fake news that would discredit them.
Another target was reportedly the former head of Brazil’s lower house, Rodrigo Maia. “I am not surprised,” Maia told Metrópoles.
In Mexico, thousands of citizens including activists, academics, journalists, diplomats and politicians were selected as possible targets for the Israeli spyware company NSO Group, which developed the hacking software Pegasus. Journalists and human rights activists were targeted as recently as 2021, the Guardian reported in late 2022. Activists say the same software has been used to target human rights defenders and journalists in El Salvador.
Political observers said the police operation against Ramagem could be a severe blow to Bolsonaro, who is facing multiple investigations relating to his tumultuous four-year administration and has been barred from seeking office until 2030 for spreading fake news. One prominent journalist described the raids as “a powerful earthquake” that had rocked Bolsonaro’s political project. Another claimed Bolsonaro allies were “in panic” at the potential ramifications of the scandal.
Bolsonaro had hoped to field Ramagem as a candidate for Rio’s next mayor in October, using the former spy chief’s police background to launch a hardline “law and order” campaign in a city long blighted by heavily armed violence.
Last month Ramagem flew to El Salvador with Eduardo Bolsonaro, son of Jair and also a politician, to visit a 40,000-capacity “megaprison” opened by its populist leader, Nayib Bukele, as part of a crackdown on the country’s gangs.
