The far-right senator Flávio Bolsonaro has reportedly fled Brazil and is on his way to the United States after losing Sunday’s presidential election to the leftwing incumbent, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who called the act “shameful”
A report by the news website Metrópoles, citing people close to the politician’s family, said he was en route to the US. “The plane is in flight,” Metrópoles reported, without making clear where it had departed from.
Bolsonaro allies told Metrópoles that he would land in Florida on Tuesday afternoon and planned to request political asylum. “The Donald Trump administration has been informed,” the website added.
Argentina’s government confirmed that Bolsonaro, his wife and two daughters had crossed the border into Argentina and boarded a private flight to Ecuador, at 11.30pm on Tuesday night.
“They did so with valid travel documentation and without any legal impediment to entering the country,” Argentina’s National Directorate of Migration said on X. “Furthermore, the transits were recorded by the competent authority without incident.”
The flight, the agency said, was operated by the company Baires Fly S.A. and bound for Guayaquil, 260km (160 miles) south-west of the Ecuadorian capital, Quito. The Bolsonaros entered Argentina via the Tancredo Neves International Bridge border crossing in the province of Misiones, it added.
Lula condemned Bolsonaro’s apparent decision to flee. “This is what the family Bolsonaro are like. Brazil is their second homeland. Their first homeland is licking the boots of the US, as he’s become accustomed to doing,” he said at an event celebrating his 81st birthday in Brasília.
“I keep imagining what’s on the conscience of a citizen who just lost the elections and flees his country … He who owes nothing, fears nothing. A citizen who sneaks out of his country owes something. The act of leaving Brazil is shameful.”
Allies also confirmed to the Folha de S Paulo newspaper that Bolsonaro was on his way to the US, and said the escape plan had been “organized and enabled by a lawyer close to the Bolsonaro clan”.
“They say the flight should land in a few hours,” the newspaper added.
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