Brazilian Senator Flávio Bolsonaro has left Brazil for the United States just two days after losing the country’s presidential runoff election, defying a Supreme Court order that barred him from leaving the country and required him to surrender his passports.
The departure, first reported by Reuters and confirmed by US officials, threatens to deepen an already tense rift between Brasília and Washington, and marks a dramatic turn in a Brazilian election that stunned observers around the world.
A shock defeat followed by a court order
Flávio Bolsonaro, 45, the eldest son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, was the favourite to win Sunday’s presidential runoff. Instead, incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won a surprise victory with 51.79 percent of valid votes, against 48.21 percent for Bolsonaro — a margin of nearly 4.4 million votes, with Lula receiving more than 64 million votes to Bolsonaro’s just under 60 million.
The day after the defeat, Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered Bolsonaro to hand over his passports within 24 hours and barred him from leaving Brazil. The order forms part of a criminal investigation into alleged money laundering, in which Bolsonaro denies any wrongdoing. The ruling cancelled all of his travel documents, including the diplomatic passport he holds as a senator, and also barred him from contacting Willer Tomaz, a lawyer under investigation alongside him.
Bolsonaro confirmed the order in a video posted on social media on Monday, saying he had been served with the notice after visiting his father, who is under house arrest in Brasília. “I was ordered right on the street to hand over my passports, and I’m also prohibited from leaving the country,” he said, denying that he had ever intended to flee.
Vanished overnight, then reported en route to the US
Bolsonaro had been missing since the early hours of Tuesday morning. After the 24-hour deadline lapsed on Tuesday, Brazilian authorities cancelled his passports. Two sources told Reuters that he had left the country for the United States, and a senior US State Department official confirmed that Washington will issue visas to Bolsonaro and his family and allow them to enter the country.
How he left remains unconfirmed. There had been speculation that he crossed the land border into Argentina near the Iguaçu Falls and then took a private jet to Florida, while other accounts suggested those reports were a diversion and that he escaped by a different route. What is confirmed is that he is reported to be travelling to the United States, and that the US government has said it will admit him.
Bolsonaro has not formally conceded defeat. He has said he will seek to annul the result over the Supreme Court’s last-minute decision to extend voting by two hours on election day, a move intended to help voters reach polling stations after public transport stoppages and heavy rain. His Liberal Party, however, acknowledged the result on Monday, saying it recognised the outcome proclaimed by the electoral court while believing questions raised about the process needed to be clarified through democratic debate.
Lula calls the flight “shameful”
President Lula, speaking at an event in Brasília to mark his 81st birthday, said he had only just learned of Bolsonaro’s departure. “I regret that he fled Brazil, because he could have stayed here and proved that the accusations are not true,” Lula said. “Leaving Brazil is shameful.”
An ally of Bolsonaro, congressman Mauricio Marcon, told Brazilian media that the senator would “lead the opposition from abroad” and that his party — now the largest in both houses of Congress — would pursue impeachment proceedings against Justice Moraes.
Echoes of 2022 — and a widening US-Brazil rift
The episode carries striking echoes of 2022, when Jair Bolsonaro travelled to the United States after refusing to concede defeat to Lula. The elder Bolsonaro later returned to Brazil and was sentenced to 27 years in prison for plotting a coup.
Washington’s decision to admit Flávio Bolsonaro now threatens to further strain relations between the two largest nations in the Americas. During the campaign, Lula accused the Trump administration of meddling in the election to support Bolsonaro — an allegation the State Department rejected as baseless. The Trump administration had previously described the elder Bolsonaro as a victim of judicial persecution.
For now, the central questions remain unanswered: exactly how Flávio Bolsonaro left Brazil, whether he will seek asylum or another form of legal status in the United States, and how Brazil’s courts will respond to a defendant who has left the country in defiance of their order. What is certain is that Brazil’s most bitter political rivalry has now spilled across borders — and the fallout is only beginning.
Sources: Reuters (via The Times of Israel and The Times of India), USA Today, The Times, The Times of India, Times Now.