Flávio Bolsonaro arrived in the US on Wednesday following a day of uncertainty over his whereabouts, after the losing Brazilian presidential candidate fled his home country, where he is under investigation for corruption and money laundering.
The rightwing politician and son of jailed ex-president Jair Bolsonaro, along with his wife and two daughters, disembarked a private jet in Miami shortly after 9am local time, according to videos and photographs taken at Opa-Locka Executive Airport.
It ended a frenzy of international speculation surrounding the 45-year-old, who suffered a surprise defeat in Sunday’s election to incumbent leftwing president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Bolsonaro’s departure from Brazil defied a travel ban imposed by a Supreme Court judge following the tight run-off ballot, which Lula won by 51.8 to 48.2 per cent. The judicial order was linked to ongoing criminal investigations and declared him a flight risk.
The hard-right senator’s arrival is likely to worsen already strained US-Brazil relations. The Trump administration, which is yet to formally recognise Lula’s victory, said on Tuesday it would grant a visa to the defeated hard-right candidate, whose father Jair Bolsonaro was an ally of the Republican president.
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His reappearance capped a dramatic 48 hours for Latin America’s most populous democracy. He and his family crossed into Argentina by land on Tuesday night at 10.50pm, the Argentine migration authority said, then 40 minutes later boarded a private jet bound for the Ecuadorean city of Guayaquil.
The new details contradict information given by allies of the right-wing politician to journalists in Brazil and the US. Two people close to the family had said they had already arrived in the US late on Tuesday.
Argentine news website Infobae reported that the senator and his family left the country on a Gulfstream G400. The same plane departed Ecuador on Wednesday morning and crossed the Caribbean Sea towards Miami, according to flight-tracking website FlightAware.
Brazil’s federal police cancelled Bolsonaro’s passports after he did not comply with a deadline to surrender the travel documents by Tuesday morning. Allies then said they were unable to contact him, as questions mounted over his whereabouts throughout the day.
Vehicles belonging to the motorcade of Flávio Bolsonaro leaving his condominium in Brasilia on Tuesday. Photograph: Pablo Porciuncula/AFP via Getty Images
Brazil’s tiebreaker presidential vote was marred by controversy after a supreme court judge decreed a last-minute extension of voting for two hours following a request by Lula’s Workers’ Party amid complaints about problems with public transport.
Following the result, Bolsonaro criticised the decision, even though his own Liberal Party had asked for polling stations to be kept open in specific areas affected by heavy rainfall.
On Monday, US president Donald Trump echoed such criticisms by saying there were signs the election had been “rigged”. Trump also said he had heard that Bolsonaro was in Argentina and “would approve” of him coming to the US.
Bolsonaro’s legal problems stem from two separate police investigations. One concerns his links to the alleged mastermind of a $10 billion bank collapse. The other concerns suspected money laundering involving Bolsonaro and a friend. He denies wrongdoing.
Supporters say the defeated presidential candidate is the victim of political persecution. The supreme court judge who demanded Bolsonaro’s passport, Alexandre de Moraes, also convicted his father last year and is a hate figure for the Brazilian right.
The elder Bolsonaro is serving a 27-year sentence, currently at home on health grounds, for plotting a coup after losing an election to Lula in 2022. Flávio Bolsonaro’s younger brother, Eduardo, was convicted this year for attempting to interfere in the trial of his father and currently lives in Texas.
Rogério Marinho, a senator who co-ordinated Bolsonaro’s campaign, said he had not been informed about the candidate’s decision to flee the country and had been surprised. But he said he “understood” it because “a series of abuses has been committed against citizens”.
Marinho said the federal police had filed a request for Bolsonaro’s passport only seven minutes after the election result was announced.
Lula, who celebrated his 81st birthday on Tuesday, said Bolsonaro’s departure was “shameful”. “What sort of guilty conscience must a citizen have when he has just lost an election and has to leave the country,” he said, adding that the Bolsonaro family treated Brazil as if it were a “second home”. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2026
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