Bolsonaro flees Brazil after losing election, newspaper says

Daniel Carvalho and Manuela Tobias, Bloomberg News on Oct 27, 2026

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BRASILIA, Brazil — Flávio Bolsonaro fled Brazil hours after losing the presidential election and being ordered to surrender his passports, the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper reported, citing allies of the conservative senator.

Brazil’s Federal Police canceled Bolsonaro’s passports after he failed to surrender them within a 24-hour deadline imposed by the Supreme Court, according to a police official familiar with the matter. Justice Alexandre de Moraes, whom the Bolsonaro family has long accused of political persecution, issued the order amid concerns Bolsonaro posed a flight risk while facing criminal investigations.

Moraes’ decision, coming on the heels of Bolsonaro’s failed attempt to challenge the election results, injected tension into an already tumultuous election and reinforced perceptions among his supporters that the court is determined to persecute their political movement.

Police have no official record of Bolsonaro leaving Brazil. Bolsonaro’s allies told Bloomberg News on Tuesday that they tried to contact him in the morning but had not heard back.

The press secretary for Argentine President Javier Milei denied that Bolsonaro had entered the country after Infobae reported that he had crossed into Argentina through Misiones, a province bordering Brazil, and planned to travel to the U.S. from there. A spokesman for Bolsonaro didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Brazil’s Federal Police have likewise found no record of Bolsonaro passing through an official Brazilian immigration checkpoint and are in contact with Argentine authorities to determine whether there is any confirmation that he is in the neighboring country, the Brazilian police officer said.

Bolsonaro lost Brazil’s presidential runoff to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Sunday. He initially said he would request the annulment of the results due to a Supreme Court decision to extend voting hours, before backing off those plans.

On Monday, Bolsonaro said in a social media video that Federal Police had ordered him to surrender both his regular and diplomatic passports and told him he was barred from leaving Brazil. Bolsonaro said the measure followed comments by his brother Eduardo, who said on a podcast that Flávio should leave Brazil if he lost the election.

A 45-year-old senator, Flávio Bolsonaro is the eldest son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, who left Brazil for the U.S. after losing the 2022 election to Lula. He later returned, and was subsequently barred from holding public office for eight years for spreading false claims about Brazil’s electronic voting system ahead of the election.

In Sept. 2025, Jair Bolsonaro was convicted of plotting a coup following his loss to Lula. He was arrested two months later amid fears he planned to flee Brazil, and is currently serving a 27-year sentence on house arrest.

Flávio Bolsonaro is subject to at least two federal investigations. The first involves allegations of money laundering, corruption and tax evasion related to his links to former Banco Master SA owner Daniel Vorcaro, whose failed lender is wrapped up in Brazil’s biggest-ever bank fraud case. Bolsonaro denies wrongdoing, but has acknowledged seeking money from Vorcaro for a film about his father.

The other stems from a Federal Police investigation that identified ties between Bolsonaro and a lawyer under scrutiny over allegations of money laundering.

A Brazilian Supreme Court justice on Tuesday ordered federal authorities to open an investigation into possible illegal foreign financing of Bolsonaro’s presidential campaign, including by a group linked to U.S. Vice President JD Vance.

The justice stressed that the order doesn’t establish that illegal foreign financing occurred, but said allegations leveled during Brazil’s presidential race warrant an investigation. Vance’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Argentina’s spokesman, Adrian Ravier, said there had been no request for asylum in Argentina from Bolsonaro during a press conference Tuesday.