Brazilian Senator Flávio Bolsonaro has reportedly fled the country following his presidential election loss over the weekend, in an apparent attempt to avoid a federal corruption investigation into his family enterprises.
The politician was reportedly on a plane to Florida as of 3 p.m. Tuesday, according to U.S. and Brazilian officials who spoke with CNN. The network reported that Bolsonaro had feared arrest in Brazil, where the country’s Supreme Court ordered him to surrender his passports and barred him from international travel as part of a criminal probe into a $10 million money-laundering and corruption scheme. He has denied wrongdoing.
Talk of Bolsonaro’s clandestine escape was first published by the Argentine news outlet Infobae, which reported he crossed the border into Argentina after losing his presidential bid against President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Sunday. Argentine officials reported “no record” of Bolsonaro entering the country.
Following his defeat, Bolsonaro took to Instagram on Monday to address the court order to surrender his passports. He said in a video that Brazilian police informed him of the exit ban in person.
Trending
“I never thought about leaving the country,” he said at the time. “I will hand over my passports and defend myself against this outrage, which is clearly an attempt to intimidate me. But no one will silence me.”
Rather than address the accusations directly, Bolsonaro connected the federal probe to the election results. In his statements, he accused Lula of staging an attempt to interfere in the election and slammed Brazilian media as a fake news “industrial complex” designed to “terrorize” the masses.
If Bolsonaro does touch down in the U.S. and is allowed to stay, he will join a group of Brazilian conservative political refugees in exile in the United States, including the country’s former intelligence chief Alexandre Ramagem and his brother Eduardo Bolsonaro, who warned him on a podcast to “leave the country” two days earlier.
On Tuesday morning, Eduardo Bolsonaro denied allegations that his brother had fled Brazil.
It’s unclear what reception Flávio Bolsonaro will receive in the U.S., though President Donald Trump has been a steadfast ally to his father, Jair Bolsonaro, and said this week that he believed Brazil’s presidential election had been rigged against Flávio.
“It looked like another rigged election, frankly,” he told reporters Monday. “I didn’t take sides, I didn’t endorse anybody or anything, but I watched the election. It looks so, so corrupt, so terrible.”
Author
