Flávio Bolsonaro flees to the United States after election defeat to Lula

Just days after his defeat in Brazil’s presidential election, Flávio Bolsonaro has fled Brazil for the United States, according to official U.S. sources and associates of the far-right leader. Figures close to him acknowledged the move to Folha de S. Paulo after he defied a court order to surrender his passport. U.S. officials also confirmed to Reuters that the plane carrying Bolsonaro was heading to the United States. According to Folha, citing sources close to the family, the Donald Trump administration will grant him asylum.

On Monday, Alexandre de Moraes, a justice of Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court (STF), gave Bolsonaro 24 hours to hand over his passports over his alleged involvement in a money-laundering scheme linked to online gambling. After he failed to comply, police invalidated his Brazilian travel documents. Bolsonaro also holds a diplomatic passport by virtue of his position as a senator, as well as an Italian passport.

The order to surrender his passports had been made public by Bolsonaro himself on Monday, when he insisted in the strongest terms that he had no intention of leaving the country. He said he planned to serve as leader of the opposition to Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva following his unexpected defeat in Sunday’s presidential election.

“I will hand over my passports and defend myself against this farce, which is a clear attempt to intimidate me,” he declared.

Bolsonaro had emerged victorious from the first round of the presidential election on October 4, and was so confident he would ultimately win the presidency that he had already begun dropping hints about the composition of his future government and his first policy plans. The polls appeared to justify that confidence. So did history: every candidate who had won the first round of a Brazilian presidential election had gone on to prevail in the runoff. Until Lula’s historic comeback on Sunday left Bolsonaro’s supporters stunned.

Justice Moraes — the same judge who led the proceedings that resulted in the conviction of Flávio Bolsonaro’s father, Jair Bolsonaro, for an attempted coup — did not wait long after the electoral defeat to act against the senator.

The deadline for Flávio Bolsonaro to surrender his passports expired on Tuesday morning, Brazilian time, without compliance. Rumors immediately began to swirl. His campaign manager, Rogério Marinho, even denied reports of his flight to some media outlets. But as the hours passed, no one was able to reach Bolsonaro or account for his whereabouts. Eventually, people close to him acknowledged to Brazilian media that he had fled.

Moraes is investigating an alleged money-laundering scheme involving online gambling in which the far-right leader is suspected of being implicated through a friend, the lawyer Willer Tomaz. The judge — the Bolsonaro family’s longtime nemesis — cited the risk that the defeated candidate might leave Brazil, pointing to recent comments by his brother Eduardo Bolsonaro, who lives in the United States and had suggested that Flávio should also move there.

Flávio Bolsonaro accused Moraes of acting out of purely political motives within hours of the election result being confirmed. In remarks released by his team on Monday, Bolsonaro flatly denied planning to leave the country. “My place is alongside the Brazilian people, facing the country’s challenges,” he said.

Speculation about his whereabouts began after reports emerged in some media outlets that Bolsonaro had travelled to Argentina. But the Argentine government officially denied any record of his entry. Reports suggested that the Brazilian politician might have chartered a private flight departing from the Argentine city of Puerto Iguazú, in the so-called Triple Frontier region with Brazil and Paraguay, where customs controls are often lax. The flight never took off.

Argentina’s National Migration Directorate, under the government of President Javier Milei, said that “following the media attention surrounding the presence of a private aircraft at Iguazú International Airport, the authorities carried out the appropriate checks on the aircraft and its crew.”

“It was ultimately determined that the company’s documentation was in order, and no flight plan involving the Bolsonaro family was submitted.”

Minutes later, speaking at a press conference at the Casa Rosada, the seat of government in Argentina, presidential spokesman Adrián Ravier said that “there has been no asylum request from Bolsonaro.” Bolsonaro’s associates now say he departed directly from Brazil.

Although Flávio Bolsonaro has not formally acknowledged the victory of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, his party, the Liberal Party, has done so, and Bolsonaro himself effectively conceded defeat when he said he intended to act as leader of the opposition from now on.

In his first reaction on Sunday night, Bolsonaro had insisted that he would not recognize the election result and would launch a legal battle to have it overturned. Hours later, faced with the reality that even prominent figures within his own political camp were unwilling to back an attempt to discredit Lula’s victory, the far-right candidate reversed course and announced that he would take on the role of opposition leader.

He did so after speaking with his father in Brasília, where he is under house arrest, serving the 27-year prison sentence imposed on him by the Supreme Federal Court (STF) for plotting a coup after losing the 2022 election to Lula. At the time of his defeat, Jair Bolsonaro also refused to accept the result and repeatedly alleged electoral fraud without producing evidence. He, too, left for the United States, although he eventually returned. In the meantime, his supporters stormed the seats of government in Brasília. Upon returning to Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro was convicted after investigators revealed that he had plotted a coup that ultimately failed for lack of military support.

A new legal front involving Flávio Bolsonaro opened at the STF on Monday. Justice Flávio Dino asked the Federal Police to investigate whether the failed candidate’s campaign received illegal foreign funding. Dino acted after receiving complaints from both Lula’s Workers’ Party (PT) and Renan Santos, a right-wing candidate eliminated in the first round who leads the Mission party, a conservative movement highly critical of Bolsonarismo.

Flávio Bolsonaro is already facing another investigation, one that became public before the election and concerns his relationship with banker Daniel Vorcaro, who is currently in prison following what has been described as the largest financial scandal in Brazilian history. Police intercepted communications in which the far-right leader allegedly asked Vorcaro for 134 million reais (about $25 million) to finance a biographical film about his father. Investigators suspect that part of that money was diverted to fund the stay in the United States of his brother, Eduardo Bolsonaro, who has for some time acted as a lobbyist in Washington in an effort to persuade the Donald Trump administration to take steps aimed at undermining Lula’s government.

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