SAO PAULO – Brazil’s former President Jair Bolsonaro has been charged with orchestrating a plot to stay in office despite losing the 2022 election — a plot that the country’s top prosecutor says included a plan to poison his opponent, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

The unprecedented charges handed down on Tuesday accuse the far-right former leader of five crimes, including a coup attempt. Another 33 people linked to Bolsonaro have also been charged.

Bolsonaro, already banned by Brazil’s top electoral court to run in elections until 2030 over abuse of power while in office and casting unfounded doubts on the country’s electronic voting system, has denied any wrongdoing and has claimed that he is being politically persecuted.

Here is where Bolsonaro’s case now stands and what could happen next:

A plot to stay in power

Bolsonaro’s case is now with Brazil’s Supreme Court, which will decide whether he will stand trial. If convicted, he could face years behind bars.

Under Brazilian law, coup charges alone carry a penalty of up to 12 years but combined with the other crimes he is charged with, it could all amount to decades in prison.

The charges are based on a police investigation, concluded in November, that accused Bolsonaro of a a multi-step scheme to cling to power. Brazil’s prosecutor general Paulo Gonet says Bolsonaro headed a criminal organization, active at least since 2021, that disseminated fake news about Brazil’s electronic voting system.

According to Gonet, Bolsonaro backed a plan to overturn the election result after his narrow defeat. One point of the plan, dubbed “Green and Yellow dagger,” involved poisoning Lula and killing Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes.

Gonet has not elaborated how far the plan evolved.

On Jan. 8, 2023, Bolsonaro’s supporters stormed and trashed the Supreme Court, Presidential Palace and Congress in the capital of Brasilia, a week after Lula took office, in a last-ditch attempt to hold onto power, Gonet said.

Bolsonaro, a former military officer who was known to express nostalgia for the country’s 1964-1985 dictatorship, had openly defied Brazil’s judicial system during his 2019-2022 term in office.

Could Bolsonaro go to prison?

Brazil’s Supreme Court will decide whether to put Bolsonaro on trial or send the charges’ document back to the prosecutor for clarification or changes — or throw it out altogether.

Two of the top court’s 11 justices were appointed by Bolsonaro, but much of his fate will be decided by a 5-judge panel that does not include either judge appointed by Bolsonaro. Its chair is Justice Alexandre de Moraes, whose rulings Bolsonaro once threatened to defy.

There is no deadline for a decision in the case.

The five crimes Bolsonaro is charged with include leading a criminal organization tasked with keeping him in office after his 2022 defeat; trying to abolish the democratic rule of law with violence; attempting a coup; damaging Brazilian state assets and harming the country’s heritage. The last two stem from the Brasilia riots.

Bolsonaro’s other legal woes

Even if acquitted, Bolsonaro’s legal woes won’t end there.

Police have also formally accused Boslonaro of ordering an official to tamper with a public health database to make it appear as though he and his 12-year-old daughter had received the COVID-19 vaccine in order to bypass entry requirements for the United States during the pandemic.

Police also say Bolsonaro ordered officials to smuggle jewelry worth more than a million dollars from Saudi Arabia and Bahrain to Brazil, then attempted to keep the jewels himself instead of having them incorporated in the presidential collection, which is state owned.

The most serious charge against Bolsonaro is the one on the attempted coup. The former president is expected to keep pushing lawmakers to issue a kind of pardon to those involved in the Jan. 8 riot, which legal experts say he sees as a path to get back into the political arena.

Still, several of Bolsonaro’s allies insist that he will be on the ballot in next year’s presidential election, rather than behind bars.

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Hughes reported from Rio de Janeiro.

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