Flavio Bolsonaro flees Brazil for US amid investigation

Senator Flavio Bolsonaro has left Brazil for the United States after he was defeated in Sunday's presidential election.

The US State Department will issue visas to Flavio Bolsonaro and his family, allowing them to enter the US, a senior State Department official said. 

Leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who secured the runoff victory in elections, told supporters outside the presidential residence in Brasilia on Tuesday that Bolsonaro had left the country.

Brazil is "the second country" of the Bolsonaro family, Lula added.

"The first is licking American boots," the reelected president said. "Those who are not liable do not fear. A fellow who secretly leaves his country, that's because he is liable for something." 

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The Supreme Court had ordered Bolsonaro to surrender his passports to stop him from leaving the country. The senator is facing multiple corruption investigations.

Bolsonaro said that he had received the Supreme Court order outside the home where his father, Jair Bolsonaro, is under house arrest.

He said Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes issued the order, the same judge who sentenced his father to prison.

The senator said in an Instagram post on Monday that he had planned to hand over his passports, but reports on Tuesday said the passports had been canceled after the deadline to turn them in had passed.

Bolsonaro lost the election runoff on Sunday after an incredibly tight voting count through the evening until Lula surged ahead.

The leftist incumbent eventually won by a clear margin of more than 4 million votes.

Bolsonaro said he would seek to annul the election results, pointing to the evening extension of voting past the planned closing time of 5 p.m. across the country. 

Bolsonaro's Liberal Party on Tuesday acknowledged the results, but the senator has not yet conceded victory.

His refusal to accept the results mirrors how his father Jair disputed his election defeat to Lula four years ago.

Jair is serving a more than 20-year prison sentence for plotting a coup to overthrow Lula after the 2022 election.

How did Bolsonaro exit Brazil?

The Argentinian Migration Department on Wednesday said Flavio Bolsonaro and his family had briefly entered Argentina before taking a private plane to Ecuador.

The department added that Bolsonaro and his family had entered the country through the Tancredo ​Neves International ‌Bridge border crossing in ​Misiones ⁠Province.

It also said that they were holding valid travel documents and that there was "no legal impediment" blocking their entry, despite a court order banning Bolsonaro from leaving Brazil.

Argentine news outlet Infobae reported earlier on Tuesday that Bolsonaro had crossed into Argentina to board a plane to the US.

Bolsonaro's exact whereabouts were unclear, with some reports claiming that he had landed in the US, while others said he was in Ecuador or still en route.

US President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he "would approve" of the far-right senator coming to the US.

"I think they're fine people. The election was very strange, and I ‌thought it was terrible," Trump told reporters at Joint ⁠Base ⁠Andrews.

Trump also repeated his belief that Flavio's father, Jair, was the victim of persecution by Brazil's judicial authorities.

"The father was treated really badly. I thought, but I wasn't involved," Trump added. "That's Brazil. It's a different country."

Flavio's brother, Eduardo Bolsonaro, said on a podcast last week that his sibling should leave the country if he lost the election.

Eduardo, who lives in the US, was convicted in absentia in June of illegally lobbying the Trump administration. He was sentenced to four years in prison and a warrant was issued for his arrest.

What are the investigations against Flavio Bolsonaro about?

The senator has been accused of laundering money through a sports betting company, money that was taken from government pensions for senior citizens.

A second investigation is looking into Bolsonaro's connections to a disgraced banker from whom he allegedly accepted millions of dollars to finance the biopic about his father, titled "Dark Horse."

Bolsonaro will lose his immunity from prosecution once his senate term ends in February 2027. He has denied wrongdoing in both cases.

Who is Brazil's Flavio Bolsonaro?

Edited by: Alex Berry and Wesley Dockery

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