Flavio Bolsonaro left Brazil after election defeat despite court ban

Flight after defeat

Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, who lost Sunday's runoff of the presidential election to the incumbent head of state Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has left Brazil despite a Supreme Court ban on leaving the country. This was reported by Deutsche Welle and AFP, citing Argentine authorities. According to AFP, Bolsonaro, his wife and two daughters entered Argentina on Tuesday evening through the Tancredo Neves border crossing in Misiones province, and then flew on a private flight operated by Baires Fly S.A. to Guayaquil, Ecuador. According to Flightradar24, the aircraft departed shortly after midnight on Wednesday from the Argentine city of Puerto Iguazu. The politician's exact whereabouts remained unclear: American media, citing anonymous sources, reported that he had already arrived in the United States, while other information pointed to Ecuador or a route toward that country.

Court ban and passports

Brazil's Supreme Court ordered the senator to surrender his passportsin order to prevent him from leaving the country; he is implicated in several corruption investigations. Bolsonaro said he received the court order at the house where his father Jair Bolsonaro is under house arrest, and that the order was issued by Justice Alexandre de Moraes — the same judge who sentenced his father to prison. On Monday the senator wrote on Instagram that he intended to surrender the passports, but on Tuesday reports emerged that they had been annulled after the surrender deadline expired. An AFP source in the police confirmed the cancellation of the Brazilian and diplomatic passports, but according to the agency, citing an Italian parliamentary document, Bolsonaro has also held Italian citizenship since 2023. Argentina's migration authority noted that the family entered 'with valid travel documents and without legal obstacles.' Bolsonaro himself, in a video on Instagram, claimed that he 'never intended to leave the country,' and called the travel ban intimidation.

Reaction and investigations

Lula, who won with 51.8% of the vote, called the departure 'shameful': 'A person who secretly leaves his country must have something to hide.' Bolsonaro's campaign manager Rogerio Marinho told journalists that the campaign did not know the candidate's whereabouts and had received only one text message from him. US President Donald Trump said he would 'approve' of the senator coming to the United States, called the elections 'rigged,' and repeated his view that Jair Bolsonaro was a victim of persecution by Brazil's judicial authorities. Two investigations are underway against Flavio Bolsonaro: one into money laundering through a sports betting company of funds embezzled from state pensions for the elderly, and another into ties with a disgraced banker from whom he, according to the accusation, accepted millions of dollars to finance a biographical film about his father, 'Dark Horse.' The senator denies guilt in both cases. After his Senate mandate ends in February 2027, he will lose his immunity. Bolsonaro said he would seek to annul the election results due to the extension of voting after 5 p.m., citing transport difficulties; according to AFP, both sides had requested the extension — both Lula and Bolsonaro himself, because of bad weather. His Liberal Party acknowledged the results on Tuesday, but the senator himself has not yet conceded defeat.

Context of the Bolsonaro family

The refusal to accept defeat repeats the scenario of four years ago: Jair Bolsonaro also contested his loss to Lula in the 2022 election, refused to concede, and left the country on the eve of his rival's inauguration, returning only three months later. He is serving a sentence of more than 20 years for plotting a coup after those elections and is currently under house arrest. Flavio's brother Eduardo Bolsonaro, who lives in the United States, advised his sibling on a podcast last week to leave the country in the event of a defeat; in June he was sentenced in absentia to four years in prison for illegally lobbying the Trump administration, and an arrest warrant has been issued for him. According to Deutsche Welle, ahead of the election the odds favored Bolsonaro after his victory in the first round; he built his campaign on a promise to free his father.