The police search the houses of eight businessmen related to Bolsonaro for exchanging coup messages

 Businessman Luciano Hang, wanted by the police, together with President Bolsonaro at a soccer match on August 7 in São Paulo (Brazil).

The Brazilian police launched an operation on Tuesday against eight large businessmen, close to President Jair Bolsonaro, suspected of being linked to a network that spreads false news and promotes attacks on institutions . The businessmen wanted by the agents participate in a WhatsApp group in which messages against the Judiciary and in favor of a coup d'état are proliferated in the event that Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva wins the elections in October. “I prefer a coup to the return of the PT (the Workers' Party). A million times,” wrote Jose Koury, a real estate businessman from Rio de Janeiro, three weeks ago. The operation includes home searches, the blocking of social network accounts and the inspection of their bank accounts.

The best known of those wanted is the billionaire Luciano Hang, owner of Havan, a chain of department stores scattered throughout Brazil that are easily identifiable because a replica of the statue of liberty stands at the entrance. Han is a proud Bolsonarista. Among the suspects, the owners of the Tecnisa and W3 engineering construction companies, the owner of a chain of restaurants called Cocobambu, the owner of a chain that sells furniture.

The operation has become the news of the day in a Brazil that is already officially campaigning for the closest duel in recent decades. The electorate is called to vote on October 2 in elections that are a heads-up between the leftist Lula, the favorite, and the current president, of the extreme right, who closes the gap.

The private messages exchanged by the Bolsonarist businessmen were revealed a few days ago by the digital media Metropoles . Hang has confirmed on Twitter that the police showed up at his company at six in the morning and has denied that he spoke suddenly in the aforementioned WhatsApp group. Senator Flávio Bolsonaro has tweeted that "it is insane to order the search for honest businessmen (...) for saying that they prefer anything to the ex-prisoner", in reference to Lula, whose sentences were annulled.

The search warrant for the Bolsonaristas is signed by the man whom Bolsonaro and his most faithful followers have considered in recent times as enemy number one and with whom there was apparently a truce, Judge Alexandre de Moraes. The magistrate is a member of the Supreme Court - the institution that most counterbalances Bolsonaro's authoritarian threats - and has just assumed the presidency of the electoral court, which supervises the voting process.