The general, considered a key figure in the investigation investigating the planning for a coup d’état after the 2022 elections, is a career military man who gained notoriety in 2014, when the Army occupied Complexo da Maré, in the north zone. of the capital of Rio de Janeiro.
Before that, between 2005 and 2007, he worked as a military attaché at the Brazilian embassy in Warsaw, Poland, and from 2011 to 2013 he held the same role at the Brazilian embassy in Washington, in the United States.
He reached the rank of general in 2009, during the government of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT), Bolsonaro’s opponent in the 2022 elections. In 2013, Braga Netto assumed the position of presidential security secretary and head of Military House of the Presidency of the Republic, under the government of Dilma Rousseff (PT).
In the same year, he was appointed general coordinator of the Special Advisory for the Rio 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games, a position he held until 2015.
From 2019 to 2020, he was chief of the Army’s General Staff, the second most important post in the Force. He left the position to take over as head of Bolsonaro’s Civil House, in February 2020, replacing Ônix Lorenzoni (PL), now a candidate to the government of Rio Grande do Sul, and passed to the reserve.
In March 2021, he took over the Ministry of Defense in place of his colleague Fernando Azevedo e Silva. The departure of Azevedo e Silva amid the tension with Bolsonaro generated a crisis, and the then commanders of the Army, Navy and Air Force resigned in protest. The president raised suspicions of a possible institutional rupture and placed the Armed Forces as his auxiliary line.
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Braga Netto remained in Defense until March 2022, then was appointed special advisor to the Presidency, a position he held until July 1st. He left the government to dedicate himself to the campaign. On March 28, he had already joined the PL and his name was being considered for the position of vice candidate.
Born in Belo Horizonte (MG) in 1957, he was a student at the Colégio Militar in the capital of Minas Gerais. In 1975, he entered the Agulhas Negras Military Academy (Aman), an Army officer training school, in Resende, Rio de Janeiro. He graduated in 1978 with the Cavalry Arms and became an aspiring officer.
Braga Netto also held the Strategic Affairs Secretariat of the Presidency of the Republic during the implementation of the Amazon Protection System (Sipam/Sivam), from 1997 to 1999, in the government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso (PSDB), and was head of the Observer Group Military personnel from the United Nations Transitional Authority in East Timor, in 2000.
