Police: Arrested colonel used an engineer’s details to plot coup

One of the Army officers targeted by operation Contragolpe (“Counter-Coup”), launched by the Federal Police on Tuesday (Nov. 19), used documents from a person with whom he had no connections, in order to acquire the cell phone line he used to contact other individuals accused of planning a coup d’état in 2022.

According to the Federal Police, Lieutenant Colonel Rafael Martins de Oliveira “used third-party data to activate the telephone line used in the operation.” In the investigators’ view, the fraud is a known military technique aimed at making it difficult to identify the phone’s real user.

Based on information extracted from the cell phone seized from Oliveira in February of this year under operation Tempus Veritatis, the federal investigators were able to find evidence that, at the end of 2022, high-ranking army officers illicitly monitored Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes and planned a coup d’état to prevent the inauguration of newly elected President Lula and vice-President Geraldo Alckmin.

At the request of the police, Justice Alexandre de Moraes, the court’s rapporteur in the case, on Tuesday authorized the preventive detention of Oliveira as well as retired General Mário Fernandes and Lieutenant Colonels Hélio Ferreira Lima and Rodrigo Bezerra Azevedo. The preventive arrest of police officer Wladimir Matos Soares was also approved.

In his ruling, Justice Moraes states that the federal agents have gathered evidence that, after executing him, the group planned to kill President Lula and Vice-President Geraldo Alckmin in order to “prevent the legitimately elected government from taking office and restrict the free exercise of democracy and the Brazilian judiciary.”

Documents

Among the files extracted from the seized device, two photographs allowed investigators to associate Oliveira with the username teixeiralafaiete230, with which the cell phone he used to talk to other military agents on a messaging app was registered. The images were photos of mechanic engineer Lafaiete Teixeira Caitano’s driver’s license and car documents.

Caitano and Oliveira, the police stated, were involved in a car accident on a highway between Brasília and Goiânia on November 24, 2022. Caitano filed a police report at the time, claiming to have crashed into the vehicle Oliveira was driving, which the latter had rented three days earlier in Goiânia.

In possession of this and further information, the investigators concluded that Oliveira used the copy of the documents that Caitano gave him so that the insurance company could be called to enable one of the telephone lines that he used to plan the coup d’état.

Agência Brasil spoke to Caitano, who corroborated the federal agents’ conclusion. The engineer confirmed that he had hit Oliveira’s car and had given him a copy of his documents.

“I’m in shock. We see news like this, but we never imagine that something like this will happen to us. Thanks to the efficiency of the police, it turned out that I was a victim,” said the engineer. “He really acted in bad faith,” Caitano said.

According to the police, Lieutenant Colonel Rafael Martins de Oliveira had already activated another phone line in June 2022 under the name of another person, identified as Luis Henrique Silva do Nascimento, a resident of Belo Horizonte.

By contacting the phone company responsible for the line, the investigators obtained not only the device’s international mobile equipment identity (imei), but also information that, from the end of May to mid-December 2022, this phone received 1,423 calls. “It should be noted that this imei belongs to the phone linked to Rafael de Oliveira, seized as part of operation Tempus Veritatis,” the police added.