By Ricardo Brito | Reuters

BRASILIA – Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro suffered the heaviest blow to his presidency so far as his popular justice minister quit on Friday and accused him of potentially criminal meddling in law enforcement, adding to the turmoil of a government struggling to confront a fast-growing coronavirus outbreak.

Sergio Moro, who won broad public support for jailing corrupt politicians and businessmen as a judge, said he was resigning because Bolsonaro fired federal police chief Mauricio Valeixo for personal and political reasons.

The shocking exit and allegations from the so-called ‘super minister’ were a hammer blow for Bolsonaro, whose popularity had already slumped for downplaying the novel coronavirus as a “little cold.” The virus has taken more than 3,600 lives in Brazil and experts say the peak has yet to come.

Former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso urged Bolsonaro to step down, while the leader of the influential gun lobby in Congress – a longstanding ally – said he could be impeached.

Moro’s soft-spoken address on live television included a series of devastating accusations against the president, who has yet to explain why he wanted Valeixo out.

The president’s office did not respond to a request for comment. Bolsonaro said on Twitter he would “re-establish the truth” at a 5 p.m. news conference.

Brazilian financial markets tumbled, with stocks falling nearly 10% before paring losses and the exchange rate slipping more than 3% to a record low. Investors fear Economy Minister Paulo Guedes could be the next ‘super minister’ to exit.

The grave allegations against Bolsonaro are likely to expose him to serious political and even legal risks.

Moro said Bolsonaro had expressed concern about Supreme Court investigations, without giving further details, and he wanted inside information from his top cop.

“The president emphasized to me, explicitly, more than once, that he wanted someone who was a personal contact, whom he could call, from whom he could get information, intelligence reports,” Moro said. “And really, that’s not the job of the federal police to give that information.”

Capitao Augusto, head of the gun lobby in Congress, which has been key to the president’s threadbare coalition, said this was the “beginning of the end” for Bolsonaro.

“His position is becoming more and more untenable,” Augusto told Reuters, adding that a parliamentary investigation was certain. “I think that after this pandemic, the first topic that will be debated will be the question of the impeachment of the president.”

The head of the Brazilian bar association OAB, Felipe Santa Cruz, also said the organization would “analyze the alleged crimes highlighted by Moro.”

As Moro finished his televised address, protests rang out across Brazil, with people banging pots and pans from their apartments and shouting “Bolsonaro out!”

Losing allies

Moro’s exit may alienate voters who backed Bolsonaro for his anti-corruption campaign in 2018, leaving the president more reliant on conservative social activists, along with the current and former generals with prominent positions in his cabinet.

“The exit of minister Sergio Moro from the government shows the Bolsonaro government distancing itself from the popular desire to fight corruption. It is the defeat of ethics,” the centrist Podemos party said in a statement.

The crisis comes just a week after Bolsonaro fired popular Health Minister Luiz Henrique Mandetta, following clashes over how to tackle the coronavirus outbreak. Mandetta, like most health experts, had supported social distancing orders by Brazilian governors, but Bolsonaro called the measures “poison” whose economic consequences could kill more than the virus.

Brazil has registered 357 coronavirus deaths in the last 24 hours, the Health Ministry said on Friday, taking the death toll to at least 3,670 as confirmed cases rose to nearly 53,000.

The government turmoil sparked a sell-off among investors already concerned about a diminished role for University of Chicago-trained Economy Minister Guedes.

“We’re seeing the government come apart,” said Fernando Bergallo, head of currency trading at FB Capital. “There are rumors that the next to go is Paulo Guedes. With that, the government is finished.”

The Economy Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

Moro said he had agreed to serve in Bolsonaro’s government as long as he had free rein to appoint his subordinates without political pressure. However, he said Bolsonaro had been seeking to change the top federal police officer since the second half of 2019 without giving an adequate reason.

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Inside the Raiders: Why Jon Gruden waited so long to say he had coronavirus The former judge said he had not seen such political interference in Brazil’s federal police even under previous governments whose officials and allies were investigated and convicted of participating in sweeping corruption schemes.

For four years, Moro oversaw Brazil’s largest-ever corruption probe, which uncovered billions of dollars in bribes and jailed scores of powerful businessmen and politicians, including leftist former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

“The president is digging his pit. Resign before being resigned,” former President Cardoso said on Twitter. “Let the vice-president take over.”