In brief
- After losing the election to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Flávio Bolsonaro left Brazil on a private jet.
- He said he and his wife made the decision “without anyone knowing” and urged people not to fingerpoint.
The United States and Argentina are under pressure to explain their involvement in helping former conservative presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro flee Brazil.
Bolsonaro said on Saturday he fled to the US because he was a victim of “persecution” in his country.
The senator lost Sunday’s election to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva before secretly leaving Brazil on Tuesday. He arrived in Florida aboard a private jet on Wednesday after travelling through Argentina and Ecuador.
Lula pulled off a dramatic comeback when he clinched a re-election victory, with Bolsonaro refusing to accept the loss and seeking to annul the vote.
His victory helped Brazil stave off a conservative wave that has seen numerous countries such as Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Peru all shift right, backed by US President Donald Trump.
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“The persecution began even sooner than I imagined,” Bolsonaro said during an Instagram livestream in which he discussed his decision to flee after his Brazilian passports were cancelled as part of a money laundering investigation.
In the video, he recounted how police informed him that his passports were being revoked after he visited his father, former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, who is under house arrest for attempting a coup after his loss to Lula in the country’s last election in 2022.
“With tears in his eyes, he told me: ‘You know where they’re going with this, don’t you?'” he said of his father.
“I told him: ‘Dad, I know… Now I know what I have to do’.”
Although he did not give any details on how he left the country, he said he and his wife made the decision “without anyone knowing” and urged people not to “point the finger at anyone.”
US President Donald Trump and Argentine President Javier Milei are under pressure to explain their involvement in Bolsonaro’s escape.
“I didn’t leave Brazil, I left for Brazil,” Bolsonaro said, alleging that Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes had made false accusations against him.
He also suggested there had been irregularities in the runoff, comparing them to “handball goals” that were not disallowed by VAR (video assistant referee), without detailing what those irregularities might have been.
He also predicted that the economy would “go bust” under Lula and said he was willing to run for president again: “I’m not talking about 2030, I’m talking about before then”.
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