Brazil’s defeated presidential challenger has gone quiet at the very moment the courts want him close. Flávio Bolsonaro was told to bring both his regular and diplomatic passports to the Federal Police by 11 a.m. on Tuesday. The deadline came and went without the documents, so officers simply cancelled them in their system.
Justice Alexandre de Moraes of the Supreme Court issued the instruction on Monday and also barred the senator from leaving the country while a money laundering investigation runs its course. Bolsonaro, 45, denies any wrongdoing. He was already facing a separate inquiry over how a film about his father was financed. His father Jair, Brazil’s ex-leader, was found guilty of plotting a coup and now lives confined to his home. On Tuesday the court added a third line of inquiry, asking police to look into alleged foreign money behind the son’s campaign.
Nobody could say publicly where the senator was. Reports in the Argentine press claimed he had slipped across to Puerto Iguazú using only an identity card and planned to fly on to the United States in a business jet. So far, nothing confirms that story. Brazilian police told Agência Brasil they hold no formal record of him exiting, Argentine authorities said they had not logged his arrival, and officers are now checking border posts. Moraes will now receive an official report on the non-compliance.
On Monday the senator had sworn he had no plans to go anywhere and would head the opposition against Lula. Lula won Sunday’s runoff with 51.79% of the vote, becoming the first candidate to recover from a first-round defeat. Bolsonaro still refuses to concede and wants the vote annulled over a two-hour extension of polling hours, although his own Liberal Party has accepted the outcome.
