Flávio Bolsonaro landed in the United States on Wednesday, ending days of speculation about his whereabouts after he fled Brazil following his presidential election loss.
The right-wing senator arrived in the US shortly after 9am local time, television reports showed.
The 45-year-old Bolsonaro lost a tightly contested presidential election to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Sunday, setting off a dramatic 48 hours. The conservative senator, who is facing multiple criminal investigations in Brazil, last spoke publicly Monday, when he said in a social media video that the Supreme Court had ordered him to surrender his passports within 24 hours.
He failed to meet the deadline, and by Tuesday morning reports began circulating in the Argentine and Brazilian press that he had fled to the US. Later that day, the US State Department said it would grant Bolsonaro and his family visas to enter the US, while Brazilian newspaper O Globo and other outlets reported that he had already landed in Miami.
On Wednesday, however, Argentina’s migration authority said Bolsonaro and his family had crossed into the country near Foz do Iguaçu before leaving on a private flight for Ecuador at 11.30pm. The account traced a route that appeared to run through a network of ideological allies across the Americas.
President Daniel Noboa’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. There’s no established evidence of direct presidential help.
Argentina’s account, which followed an earlier denial from President Javier Milei’s office that Bolsonaro had entered the country, added another twist to a chaotic saga that has gripped Brazil since Sunday’s election.
Argentina’s migration authority said Bolsonaro and his family presented “valid travel documentation” and faced no legal impediments to entering the country.
That account appears at odds with the actions of Brazilian authorities, who had cancelled Bolsonaro’s passports earlier Tuesday. It was not immediately clear what travel document he used to cross the border. Bolsonaro also has an Italian passport.
Milei’s top adviser, Santiago Caputo, was in the Iguaçu area at the time Bolsonaro’s plane departed from there, according to Argentine newspaper La Nación.
On Tuesday, Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party called an emergency meeting to discuss his whereabouts. From his lawyer to his campaign manager, many suggested they had no clue whether he had left and where he was going to. “I am as surprised as you are,” his lawyer, Frederick Wassef, told reporters.
His brother Eduardo Bolsonaro, who’s currently in the US, said before Sunday’s vote that Flávio may have to leave the country if he lost the election. A Brazilian judge mentioned those comments in his decision to seize his passports for considering him a flight risk.
by Leonardo Lara, Manuela Tobias & Augusta Saraiva, Bloomberg
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