Hi r/BCIT!
As a Brazilian, let me please add some more context to the already extensive explanation that u/kidbengalinha5 has provided you with, so that you know how fd up this whole situation is. I will try to provide sources to everything - within reason, as if I were to find sources for all of this clusterfk it would take me an entire afernoon. If you need sources for something specific I haven't provided, please ask. Moreover, most sources are unfortunately not available in English. However, if you're really curious, both Google Translate and DeepL do a great job with the Portuguese-English pairing nowadays.
Currently, Brazil is going through a covid catastrophe. There are already almost half a million confirmed covid deaths (as of June 8th, 2021, we are sitting at a 476.792 death toll, with over 2 thousand new deaths per day).source The numbers are likely subnotified, and do not include many collateral deaths caused by the frequent lack of hospital beds, or even shortages of oxygen supply caused by the federal government's omission source.
I say omission, and not incompetence, because there is glaring (and growing) evidence that that this catastrophe was not a consequence of mismanagement, but intentional choices made by the government in order to SPREAD the virus rather than contain it. A multidisciplinary team in the University of São Paulo has analyzed thousands of government documents and decisions through the course of the pandemic. The conclusion they have reached is that the government has actively seeked to spread the virus under the bogus assumption that if 70% of the population was infected, we would develop a "herd immunity" and end the pandemic. source.
However, even without this study, any layman who follows brazilian news can easily guess that this was their plan all along. Additionally, there are dozens (quite possibly hundreds) of recorded instances where top government officials and the President himself have publicly stated variations of the idea that we should let the young people move around without restrictions in order to spread the virus and "get this thing over with".
Now, for the sake of the argument, let's ignore all of the science and pretend that reinfection and variants do not exist (in fact, the Brazilian variant is a direct product of this government strategy, but I digress). If we were to infect 70% of the population in order to achieve this so called herd immunity, and estimating the covid-19 lethality rate at 1% (which is actually quite a bit below most estimates I've found with some quick googling), we reach the number of 1,470,000 (one and a half million) deaths. You read that right - the President's plan was to sacrifice one and a half million Brazilians in order to "keep the economy going".
For anyone who had been following Brazilian politics over the last few years, this level of stupidity from the president should come as no surprise, as he has always been very open about his science denialism, and even takes advice on politics and "philosophy" from literal flat-earthers. I could go on further for hours about this mess, but as I already have taken up too much of your time, let me get to the point:
For the last few weeks, the parliament has been conducting a probe / inquiry comission in order to investigate the government's mismanagement of the pandemic. This effort has been very fruitful, as more and more evidence is being revealed of the so called "genocide plan" to achieve herd immunity. source
The comission has found out that the government has ignored over EIGHTY (yes, 80) emails with vaccine offers from Pfizer over the course of months, and have only replied them around March of 2021, after a great deal of pressure from the population and the press. The first Pfizer shots arrived in Brazil last month! You have probably also heard that the President publicly stated that the Pfizer vaccine could turn you into a crocodile source. In short, Brazil is, to the best of my knowledge, the only nation in the world who effectively has an Anti-Vaxxer as its head of state.
So far, over half the vaccine shots delivered in Brazil were from the Sinovac vaccine, which was only approved and purchased because of a collective effort spearheaded by the State Government of São Paulo. Said effort was constantly and consistently sabotaged by the President, as the governor of São Paulo is his political opponent. I have no love for the Governor of SP - in fact, I disagree with most of his political stances. But I will be eternally thankful to him for doing the job that the federal government should have done and providing brazilians (including my parents, grandparents and many other loved ones) with vaccines while the federal government wanted us all to die.
This is even more depressing when you realize that Brazil has one of the most advanced vaccination logistics systems in the world. In fact, the world record for vaccinations within the span of a day is held by Brazil, when 18 million children were vaccinated against polio. We have this behemoth of a vaccination infrastructure system, but because the federal government is currently occupied by denialist lunatics we lack the vaccines themselves.
Now where does Mr Zanotto fit in all of this? The parliamentary probe has found out that while we do have an official Health Ministry (who has been quite innefective at its job, and had its minister switched THREE times by the president during the course of the pandemic, mostly because the previous incumbent didn't agree with some insane order), most of the Federal Government's policies have been guided by a secondary group, which has been dubbed the "Parallel Cabinet".
Said parallel group is comprised of many individuals, a good chunk of them not even remotely specialized in healthcare, biology, or similar fields. A few of them are in fact healthcare professionals, but have abandoned any respect for science, their profession, and common sense. One of them is Mr Paolo Zanotto. He is Number 5 in this picture of the Parallel Cabinet. Between 13 and 14 is the President himself.
A video from 2020 has recently been leaked to the parliamentary probe showing one of the meetings of this group. Well, I say leaked, but it was actually posted to the President's social media at the time, cause in their lack of common sense they thought there was nothing wrong with it.
In this video, Mr Zanotto can be seen sitting in the same table as the president (he's the second guy to his left, the one with the long hair). He also delivers a speech proposing the idea of a "Shadow Board / Shadow Cabinet" (his words, in English, an can be heard at around 1:25) that guides the government in the handling of the pandemic. I should probably add that he probably does not know what a Shadow Cabinet is in the context of British (and perhaps other countries'?) politics, as this concept does not exist in Brazil. Well, some of the consequences of the influence of this "Shadow Board" throughout the months have been listed above. Every member has their hands stained with the blood of thousands.
The senate probe has been summoning many of the members of the "shadow board" for inquiries. They have the intention of summoning Mr Zanotto soon, but it will be impossible to enforce said summoning if he has left (fled) the country in order to work at BCIT.
Please show this to whoever in BCIT has some influence over this decision, and help us as a nation make him face the consequences of his actions, by helping the investigators hold him and his associates accountable.
TLDR: Paulo Zanotto has been part of an unnoficial advisory to the President, and said board had great influence in the lunatic approach of the Brazilian government to fighting the pandemic - resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths. A senate inquiry comission is currently onto him, but he is trying to escape the authorities by fleeing to Canada. Please show this tho whoever has some leverage wrt his acceptance in BCIT.