RIO DE JANEIRO: Former president Jair Bolsonaro's inner circle has been caught up in an investigation over illegal spying in Brazil, a spreading scandal whose ripples have drawn dangerously close to the far-right leader.
Here is a look at the allegations.
The investigation made news in October when police arrested two officials at the Brazilian Intelligence Agency (Abin) accused of inappropriate use of Israeli spyware FirstMile, which tracks targets' cell phone geolocation, during Bolsonaro's government (2019-2022).
Last week, officers raided the home and offices of Bolsonaro's former intelligence chief, Alexandre Ramagem, who is now a congressman for the ex-president's party.
And on Monday, police raided the Bolsonaro family's vacation home and the home and offices of Bolsonaro's son Carlos, a Rio de Janeiro city councilor.
Carlos Bolsonaro's name had already been mentioned in 2020, when an ex-minister in his father's cabinet, Gustavo Bebianno, said in an interview that the city councilor had pushed to create a "parallel" Abin.
Bebianno died of a heart attack shortly after.
Police say a "criminal organization" within Abin is suspected of illegally monitoring public officials and others during Bolsonaro's presidency.
Court documents show investigators suspect conspirators used FirstMile without judicial authorization and carried out illegal intelligence-gathering on behalf of Bolsonaro's inner circle.
Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who authorized the raids, said police had identified Carlos as part of the scheme's "political nucleus."
Investigators allege the spying also aimed to help Bolsonaro's son Flavio, a senator, fight off a corruption investigation, and help another of his four sons, Jair Renan, in an influence-peddling probe.
Abin allegedly spied on hundreds of politicians, judges, journalists and others illegally.
Alleged targets include Moraes himself, a frequent target of Bolsonaro's attacks after overseeing several investigations against him.
Moraes also heads the federal electoral tribunal, which has barred Bolsonaro from running for office for eight years over his unproven fraud allegations against Brazil's voting system.
Others include fellow Supreme Court Judge Gilmar Mendes, former lower-house speaker Rodrigo Maia and then-Ceara state governor Camilo Santana, who is now President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's education minister.
Bolsonaro told CNN Brasil he "never received geolocation information on anyone," and condemned the investigation as "persecution."
Carlos Bolsonaro's lawyers said in a statement their client "reiterates he had no connection to Abin."
Lula fired deputy intelligence director Alessandro Moretti and four other high-ranking Abin officials Tuesday.
The agency's number three official, Paulo Mauricio Fortunato, was sacked after being targeted in the October police operation.
The impact is also political, in a country still divided by veteran leftist Lula's narrow win over Bolsonaro in 2022 and gearing up for October local elections widely seen as a proxy war.
The scandal "discredits the Bolsonaro government's practices for a large part of the population," said political scientist Paulo Baia, of Rio de Janeiro Federal University.
