Former PRF general director () Silvinei Vasques was arrested this Friday (26) in Paraguay while trying to escape, according to .
He was imprisoned for six months by the First Panel of the (Supreme Federal Court) as a participant in one of the cores of the government’s coup plot (PL).
The ministers found him guilty of five crimes, including attempted coup d’état, after he carried out blitzes in places with a predominance of Lula (PT) voters on the day of the second round of the 2022 elections.
Silvinei was arrested at Asunción airport when he tried to board an international flight to El Salvador with a false Paraguayan passport. He reportedly broke the electronic ankle bracelet in Santa Catarina, and the suspicion is that he went by car to Paraguay.
According to members of the PF, when the equipment was broken, the corporation contacted the minister of the (Supreme Federal Court), and preventive detention was ordered.
The PF detected a monitoring failure at 3am on Thursday (25th), Christmas Day. According to reports from the agents, at that time, the ankle bracelet stopped transmitting the GPS signal.
Silvinei would have used a rented car to leave the building where he lived, in the city of São José (SC), towards Paraguay. Wearing sweatpants, a t-shirt and a cap, he took bags, dog toilet mats and a pitbull dog to the vehicle.
The first team called to check the loss of signal from the ankle bracelet was the Santa Catarina Penal Police, around 8pm on Thursday. Silvinei was no longer in his apartment.
At around 11pm, a team from the Federal Police Regional Superintendence in the state headed to the scene.
The PF obtained images from the building’s closed circuit TV and identified that Silvinei was using a vehicle on behalf of a car rental company.
According to the decision that determined the arrest of the former director, he was seen at the location until 7:22 pm on the 24th, on Christmas Eve.
According to the sequence of images, at 7:06 pm he placed bags in the trunk of the car. At around 7:14 pm, he placed more belongings in the back seat (including food and many bags of dog toilet mats), on the passenger side. At 7:22 pm, he went to the car carrying food containers and leading the dog and left.
At the time, he was wearing black sweatpants, a gray Puma t-shirt and a black Puma cap.
Once in Asunción, he tried to board a flight to El Salvador carrying a Paraguayan passport issued in the name of Julio Eduardo Baez Fernandez. He also carried a letter in which he said he could not listen or speak and stated that he was going to El Salvador for medical treatment. The information was revealed by the UOL portal and confirmed by Sheet.
In the text, Silvinei said that he had brain cancer that would prevent him from speaking, hearing and seeing and that he could only communicate in writing. The document stated that medical treatment in Foz do Iguaçu had had blindness and deafness as side effects.
Even though he was sentenced by the STF on December 16th, Silvinei remained free because the deadline for submitting an appeal was still running. He had worn an electronic ankle bracelet since leaving prison in 2024 and had his passport cancelled.
After the arrest, the Minister of Justice, Ricardo Lewandowski, called the Minister of the Interior of Paraguay, Enrique Riera Escudero, to speed up the extradition process.
The former director was handed over to the Brazilian Federal Police this Friday (25).
Eduardo Nostrani, lawyer for the former director of the PRF at the Supreme Court, says he became aware of the escape on Friday morning. Acting on behalf of Silvinei in Paraguay is the responsibility of a local lawyer, not yet identified by the defense.
The former director of the PRF was accused of being part of a group of Bolsonaro’s assistants and, according to the PGR (Attorney General’s Office), articulated measures to facilitate a coup d’état.
Also convicted in this group (former international advisor to the Presidency), Marcelo Costa Câmara (former advisor to the Presidency), Marília Ferreira (former member of the Ministry of Justice) and Mário Fernandes (retired general and former executive secretary of the General Secretariat of the Presidency).
Other cases
Silvinei’s escape adds to others by Bolsonarists such as former federal deputy Alexandre Ramagem (PL-RJ), former federal deputy Carla Zambelli (PL-SP) and participants in the 8 January coup acts.
Sentenced to more than 16 years in prison for an attempted coup d’état, Ramagem fled to the United States and had his mandate as federal deputy revoked by the Chamber. Minister Alexandre de Moraes also reopened the case against the deputy, which could increase his sentence.
Zambelli was sentenced by the STF to ten years in prison, in addition to the loss of her mandate, for invading the CNJ (National Council of Justice) system, with the help of hacker Walter Delgatti Neto, who was also convicted.
She has been imprisoned in Italy since July, after passing through the United States. Last week, the STF decided to revoke her mandate, after the Chamber of Deputies opted to keep the parliamentarian in office.
