Flávio Bolsonaro has left Brazil for the US with his family, two days after losing the presidential runoff and in defiance of a Supreme Court order to surrender his passports, Reuters reported, citing sources.
An ally of the right-wing senator confirmed his departure to the news agency, which cited an earlier media report. A senior federal police official told Reuters that Bolsonaro had not passed through any regular migration checkpoint, leaving it unclear how the defeated candidate had left the country.
The departure marks a dramatic turn for a politician who, until October 25, had been favoured to win the presidency. Left-wing incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva defied most pre-election polls to take 51.79% of the vote against 48.21% for Bolsonaro, securing a record fourth term.
It also contradicts the senator’s own assurances. After being served with the passport order on October 26, he denied in a video posted on social media that he planned to leave Brazil, calling the decision “a clear attempt to intimidate me”.
“I will hand over my passports and defend myself against this aberration, which is a clear attempt to intimidate me. But no one will silence me,” he said. “To resist the chaos, I will organise the opposition.”
The US embassy in Brazil did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and Bolsonaro’s lawyer declined to comment, Reuters said. Paulo Figueiredo, a right-wing influencer who acts as an unofficial spokesperson for the Bolsonaro family, declined to say where the senator was.
“After months of intense work that has been unfairly thwarted, I am not in the mood to speak to the press,” Figueiredo said in a message, according to Reuters. “If I have any comments to make on any matter, I will get in touch.”
The Argentine route
Argentine media reported that Bolsonaro may have crossed into Argentina in order to fly out from there. Javier Milei, Argentina’s libertarian president, openly backed Bolsonaro during the campaign, and is the only South American leader not to have publicly recognised Lula’s victory.
According to Infobae, Bolsonaro was presumed to have entered the north-eastern province of Misiones using his national identity card. From there, he would have flown to the US from Puerto Iguazú on a private flight scheduled to leave at 2am local time on October 27. The flight was to be operated by a Gulfstream G400 jet, registration LV-JQW, owned by Argentine company Baires Fly SA, which had requested customs and immigration clearance for four passengers and three crew members.
Clarín offered a different account. The newspaper reported that the Miami-bound flight was cancelled a few hours before departure. The aircraft had arrived in Puerto Iguazú from Buenos Aires at midnight with three crew on board, by which time its flight plan to the US had already been cancelled.
The two pilots and a flight attendant, unaware of the cancellation, spent the night at a hotel in the city while awaiting instructions from Baires Fly, Clarín said. A source told the newspaper that the only explanation given was that “one of the passengers had a problem”, and that the passenger list was never submitted to immigration and customs. The sources consulted did not rule out that the flight had been intended for Bolsonaro.
It was not immediately clear whether Bolsonaro had been on board, or how else he might have reached the US.
A 24-hour deadline
On October 26, Supreme Court justice Alexandre de Moraes barred Bolsonaro from leaving the country and ordered him to surrender his ordinary and diplomatic passports. Moraes oversaw the coup case against the senator’s father, former president Jair Bolsonaro. The senator was notified of the order as he left a visit to his father, who is under house arrest in Brasília.
“This morning (October 26) I went to visit my father. As you know, he is under house arrest. Upon leaving, Lula’s Federal Police were at his doorstep and, right there on the street, they notified me of the order to hand over my passports; furthermore, I was prohibited from leaving the country,” Bolsonaro said.
He was given 24 hours to hand over the documents as part of a money laundering investigation. Two other sources told Reuters that the deadline had lapsed and that his travel documents were being cancelled.
"The revocation of the passports comes amid suspicions that the defeated candidate in the 2026 presidential election crossed the border into Argentina using an identity document with the intention of travelling to the US aboard an executive jet," Brazilian state news agency Agencia Brasil stated, citing the Federal Police.
According to Clarín, the order was prompted by comments from his younger brother, former congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro, who has lived in the US for several months and faces an arrest warrant in Brazil. “If my brother does not win, I’m in favour that he would leave the country,” Eduardo told podcaster Steven Crowder this month.
“I never said that. Is that grounds for taking away my passport?” Flávio Bolsonaro said, answering to reporters questioning his intentions following the runoff defeat.
Mounting legal jeopardy
The senator is under investigation for suspected corruption and money laundering. One case concerns the $24mn financing of Dark Horse, a biographical film about his father, and his ties to Daniel Vorcaro, the jailed banker former owner of Banco Master. A second Supreme Court inquiry concerns alleged money laundering involving Willer Tomaz, a lawyer and close friend of the senator. The passport order was issued in this second case. Bolsonaro denies wrongdoing in both.
His legal exposure is set to grow. As a sitting senator he can be tried only before the Supreme Court, but that privilege lapses when his term ends in February, leaving him without elected office for the first time since 2002, Folha de S.Paulo reported.
An adviser to the family told the Washington Post on October 26 that the prospect of prison was weighing heavily on him. “He’s terrified,” the adviser said. “He is worried his father will die in jail, that he himself will be jailed this week and that he may have a long prison term ahead.”
Disputed result
Bolsonaro has not formally conceded. On the night of the vote he said he would seek the annulment of the result over alleged irregularities, arguing that a two-hour extension to voting favoured the ruling party. By the evening of October 26, however, he had dropped that push in favour of a lawsuit accusing Lula of exploiting his office during the campaign, the Washington Post reported.
An analysis of electoral records by Insper professor Pedro Burgos found that fewer than 35,000 votes, or about 0.03% of the total, were cast during the extension, according to Reuters.
His Liberal Party said on October 26 that it acknowledged Lula’s victory. “We recognise the presidential result proclaimed by the electoral court,” the party said, while adding that questions raised during the campaign needed to be clarified.
Donald Trump, a longstanding ally of the Bolsonaro family, said that the vote “looked like another rigged election”, without providing evidence. He stopped short, however, of offering to intervene. Lula’s surprise victory broke a run of seven consecutive wins for the US-aligned right in Latin American presidential races, dealing a blow to Washington's self-described "Donroe Doctrine" of supremacy over the Western Hemisphere.
If confirmed, the senator’s departure would echo his father’s path. Jair Bolsonaro also travelled to the US after refusing to concede defeat to Lula in 2022. He later returned to Brazil and was sentenced to 27 years in prison for plotting a coup.