How Flávio Bolsonaro fled Brazil

On Monday afternoon, Flávio Bolsonaro recorded a selfie video to thank supporters of his bid for the Brazilian presidency, which ended the previous evening in a surprise defeat.He revealed that the federal police had asked him to hand over his passport as part of a corruption investigation, which he said was an attempt to “intimidate” him.“I never thought about leaving the country,” he claimed, insisting he would surrender his passport. “Nobody will silence me.”Yet early on Wednesday morning, Bolsonaro, his wife and two daughters descended from a private jet at Miami’s Opa Locka Executive Airport after a 24-hour, clandestine journey that included stops in Argentina and Ecuador and a blizzard of misinformation thrown up by allies to obscure his movements.READ MORE[ Flávio Bolsonaro calls himself the 'leader of Brazil' after fleeing to USOpens in new window ]Bolsonaro had pledged on Monday to lead the opposition against Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the veteran left-winger who defied the opinion polls to triumph in the runoff. Yet by Wednesday, the right-wing populist was seeking refuge in the US and claiming not only to be the victim of political persecution, but to have been the real winner of an election that was stolen from him.The dramatic departure of the losing presidential candidate has launched a war of narratives that will shape both Brazilian politics and the country’s relationship with the US for years to come.Members of the Bolsonaro family are shielded as they arrive in Florida. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images In a note he released shortly after arriving in Miami, Bolsonaro said he was the victim of a “politically motivated witch-hunt”. But he also claimed that the result of the election had been manipulated.“I present myself to the Brazilian people and the international community as the real president-elect of Brazil,” he wrote in a statement distributed by allies that provided no evidence to back up the claim.Speaking on Tuesday before Bolsonaro made his claim of election fraud, Lula said it was “shameful” for his rival to flee Brazil. “A citizen who sneaks out of the country usually has something to hide,” he said.Bolsonaro’s father, former president Jair Bolsonaro, was sentenced last year to 27 years in jail for plotting a coup to overturn the 2022 election in which he also lost to Lula.The intrigue involving Flávio Bolsonaro began shortly after Lula won Sunday’s runoff. According to Bolsonaro’s supporters, the federal police filed a request to seize his passport just seven minutes after the electoral authorities announced the final result.That request was approved by Alexandre de Moraes, the supreme court justice who is in charge of an investigation into Bolsonaro over alleged money laundering. Bolsonaro has denied any wrongdoing and no charges have been issued.Moraes was also the judge who ran the trial last year that convicted Jair Bolsonaro.The police argued that Flávio Bolsonaro was a flight risk, in part because the other person under investigation in the case, Willer Tomaz, was already in Florida.The first reports of Flávio Bolsonaro’s plan to flee Brazil appeared late on Tuesday morning. Photograph: Eraldo Peres/AP On Tuesday, Bolsonaro was due for a day of meetings with allies in Brasília to discuss post-election strategies but did not respond to messages. Rogério Marinho, a senator who co-ordinated Bolsonaro’s campaign, said Bolsonaro had sent him a text message at 8am, saying he needed to clear his head.Marinho said he was “surprised” by Bolsonaro’s disappearance but added that he understood the reasons. He said of the police’s approach: “It seems to me like preparation for something more persecutory.”One family friend said “everyone was taken by surprise”. They added that Jair Bolsonaro only became aware of his eldest son’s missing status on Tuesday through media reports.The first reports of Bolsonaro’s plan to flee Brazil appeared late on Tuesday morning. Infobae, a leading website in Argentina, said Bolsonaro and his family had crossed the border into Argentina and were en route to the US.However, as Brazilian police scoured records of border crossings, the immigration authority in Buenos Aires said there was no evidence that Bolsonaro had entered Argentinian territory.As speculation swirled about his whereabouts, there were reports in Brazilian media that he had travelled to the US via Venezuela.Later on Tuesday, allies and people close to the Bolsonaro family who asked not to be named told domestic and international media that Flávio Bolsonaro had arrived in Florida and was with his brother Eduardo Bolsonaro. The latter is in self-imposed exile in the US after being convicted in Brazil of trying to interfere in his father’s trial.However, this now appears to have been a diversionary tactic to throw Brazilian authorities off the scent.In the early hours of Wednesday, Argentina’s immigration department announced that Bolsonaro, his wife and two daughters had entered the country by land on Tuesday evening. It said they crossed the near 500-metre-long Tancredo Neves Bridge to Puerto Iguazú at 10.50pm.Although Bolsonaro’s Brazilian passport had by then been suspended, one theory is that he may have used his Italian passport to enter the country.A plane carrying Brazilian Flávio Bolsonaro and his family arrives in Miami. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images About 40 minutes after entering Argentina, the entourage boarded a private plane that left for Guayaquil in Ecuador, according to the immigration department. After stopping there, the aircraft continued its path, flying across the Caribbean Sea towards Miami, according to flight-tracking website FlightAware. The route avoided passing over Brazilian airspace.The political fallout will depend in part on whether Bolsonaro can convince a large section of his allies that he had to flee an unfair investigation. The rapidity with which the police moved against him following the election result is being used by allies as evidence that the inquiry is politically motivated.However, the police will probably argue that the suspicion about Bolsonaro being a flight risk turned out to be completely valid. They are likely also to point out that there was no arrest warrant, only an order to surrender his passport, which is not unusual in similar investigations.While Bolsonaro might have won support for the idea that he is being harassed by the authorities, he is likely to secure much less backing for the unsubstantiated claim about election fraud. His own party announced on Monday that it accepted the result.The international implications will hinge on whether Bolsonaro receives substantial help from either Argentina or the Trump administration, neither of which has yet publicly acknowledged Lula’s victory in Sunday’s election. In his statement, Bolsonaro thanked Javier Milei, Argentina’s president, for his “courage, sense of justice and legality” and Donald Trump for “welcoming me”.Milei is a close ideological ally of Bolsonaro and spoke at the launch of his election campaign. Bolsonaro’s departure from Brazil for the US was celebrated by officials in the Argentinian government.“Flávio Bolsonaro is free from the claws of communism that wants to lock up all its opposition,” said Juan Pablo Carreira, director of digital communication in Milei’s presidency.Media in Argentina reported that Santiago Caputo, one of Milei’s closest advisers, was in Puerto Iguazú during the time Bolsonaro passed through the border town. In a statement on X, Caputo expressed his “admiration” for whoever had misled the media about Bolsonaro’s movements. The government in Argentina did not respond to requests for comment about Caputo’s movements or whether it helped Bolsonaro.The US state department moved quickly on Tuesday to issue visas for the Bolsonaro family. Marco Rubio, secretary of state, has been fiercely critical of Lula in the past and Bolsonaro met Trump in the White House shortly before the election campaign began.However, it is not clear whether the Trump administration will publicly endorse Bolsonaro’s argument that he is being persecuted, let alone the election fraud claim.On Monday, Trump said there were some signs the election was “rigged” but he also went out of his way to say how much he liked Lula. “I didn’t take sides,” he said. After Bolsonaro claimed fraud on Wednesday, he was even blunter: “I am not going to get involved.” - Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2026[ Tom Hennigan in Sao Paulo: Brazil’s electoral phenomenon Lula stages unprecedented comebackOpens in new window ]