After six months and 81 indictment requests, Senate wraps Covid inquiry

Created in April to investigate the Jair Bolsonaro government’s pandemic response, the Brazilian Senate’s Covid inquiry has officially reached its end. On Tuesday evening, the committee’s 11 members approved its final report in a predictable 7-4 vote, which followed a split established early on between pro-government senators and independent lawmakers who set out to hold the president accountable for his do-nothing approach to the deadliest health crisis in Brazil’s recent memory.

A first draft of the investigation’s final report, presented last week, recommended 68 indictments. In the committee’s last meeting, however, 13 more individuals were added to the list, reaching a whopping 79 people and two companies. The list of targets includes President Jair Bolsonaro, four cabinet ministers, his three politician sons, and even one of the inquiry’s members — who supported unproven coronavirus treatments every time he addressed the committee.

It is without a doubt the biggest congressional investigation in 15 years, since the Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva administration was put under the microscope for operating a bribery scheme in Congress.

After six months of taking testimonies and analyzing thousands of public documents, the committee concluded that the government shoulders the lion’s share of the blame for Brazil’s colossal Covid death toll — almost 606,000 deaths, only surpassed by that of the U.S.

Against all odds, the committee ends as a rare success case for congressional investigations, which usually go no further than mere political theater. While the government has dismissed the inquiry as a political hitjob on the president, senators gathered tons of documents detailing Mr. Bolsonaro’s denialist pandemic playbook.

He stalled Pfizer vaccine purchases, shunned Sinovac jabs from China, and only procured half of the vaccines available to Brazil by way of the UN-backed COVAX facility. His...