Defeated Brazilian presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro has left Brazil for the United States, two sources told Reuters on Tuesday, just a day after the country’s Supreme Court ordered him to surrender his passports and barred him from leaving the country.
Bolsonaro, a senator and the eldest son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, lost Sunday’s presidential runoff to incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, taking 48.21 percent of the vote to Lula’s 51.79 percent. He has refused to concede, saying he would seek to annul the result over alleged voter irregularities — even as his own Liberal Party acknowledged Lula’s victory on Monday.
On Monday, Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes gave Bolsonaro 24 hours to hand over his passports as part of a money-laundering investigation. The probe centres on Bolsonaro’s lawyer and friend Willer Tomaz, and on financing for a biopic about his father, Dark Horse. Investigators have said Bolsonaro was listed as the “master user” of a bank account belonging to one of Tomaz’s companies. Bolsonaro denies wrongdoing.
When the deadline lapsed on Tuesday, Brazilian authorities cancelled his passports. Hours later, sources told Reuters he had departed for the United States. It was not immediately clear how he left: a senior Federal Police official said there was no record of him passing through any official border crossing, and reports of a possible route through Argentina were met with denials — Argentina’s migration directorate said it had no record of his entry, and a spokesman for President Javier Milei said he had not requested asylum.
Other allies pushed back on the reports altogether. Campaign coordinator Rogério Marinho said Bolsonaro “didn’t leave,” and family spokesmen Fábio Wajngarten and Eduardo Bolsonaro — the former president’s younger son, who lives in the United States — also denied them. Bolsonaro’s office did not respond to requests for comment, and one person close to him said he had been unable to reach him by phone all morning.
The denials sit awkwardly against Bolsonaro’s own words a day earlier. In a video posted on Monday, after Federal Police officers served him with the court order as he left his father’s house, he said: “I will hand over my passports and defend myself against this aberration… But no one will silence me.” He also pledged to “organize the opposition” against Lula’s government.
The episode is a near-exact echo of his father’s exit four years ago. After losing to Lula in 2022 and likewise refusing to concede, Jair Bolsonaro flew to the United States, only to return to Brazil later and eventually receive a 27-year prison sentence for plotting a coup after his supporters stormed government buildings in Brasília.
What happens next is genuinely uncertain — and that uncertainty is the story. It is unclear whether Flávio Bolsonaro can enter the United States with cancelled passports, whether he will seek asylum, or even where exactly he is. The U.S. Embassy in Brazil and the State Department have not commented. The Trump administration has previously described Jair Bolsonaro as a victim of judicial persecution, and Lula has accused Washington of working with the Bolsonaro family to return them to power — a charge that makes any American welcome for the younger Bolsonaro a diplomatic problem for both capitals, not just a personal one.
For Brazil, the flight — if confirmed — would close the strangest chapter of an already extraordinary election: a frontrunner who lost by more than three percentage points, refused to accept the result, and within 48 hours went from candidate to fugitive from a court order. Lula, who won more than 64 million votes, takes office for a fourth, non-consecutive term in January. Whether his defeated rival watches it from abroad, or returns to face the investigation, will shape how Brazilians judge both the election and the courts that policed it.
