President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva fired Alessandro Moretti from his position as deputy director of the Brazilian Intelligence Agency (Abin) on Tuesday night, hours after he said there was “no mood” for Mr. Moretti to remain in office.
In documents disclosed by the Supreme Court last week, Federal Police agents wrote of “a possible collusion” between people under investigation for illegal usage of spyware and the current Abin leadership.
According to the feds, Mr. Moretti met people under investigation and told them that the inquiry had a “political tone” and that it “would pass.”
In the last two weeks, Federal Police raided multiple addresses linked to people suspected of illegally using spy intelligence software to monitor political opponents of the former Jair Bolsonaro administration.
This included the addresses of Congressman Alexandre Ramagem, a former Abin head himself, and Councilman Carlos Bolsonaro, the second-eldest son of former president Bolsonaro. Mr. Moretti was not targeted by the feds.
The raids were a sequel to “Operation Last Mile,” carried out in October 2023, which investigated the misuse of mobile device geolocation system FirstMile, a software developed by Israeli espionage company Cognyte.
According to the feds, evidence obtained during the investigation “indicates that a criminal group created a parallel structure in Abin and used its tools and services for illicit actions, producing information for political and media use, to obtain personal benefits, and even to interfere with Federal Police investigations.”
Mr. Moretti will be replaced by Marco Aurélio Cepik, a professor and author who previously served as the head of Abin’s Intelligence School.
Early in 2023, after the January 8 riots, Lula moved Abin from under the military-run Institutional Security Office (GSI) to the purview of the chief of staff’s office in an effort to demilitarize strategic areas of the government.
The move was followed by the dismissal of four Abin directors on Tuesday, although their names were not publicly revealed.
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