Defeated presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro has arrived in the US, hours after Brazil cancelled his passports, sources have told the BBC.
The right-wing candidate left the country after its Supreme Court ordered that he surrender his passports amid an investigation into alleged money laundering. Bolsonaro has not been charged and has denied the allegations.
His passports were cancelled on Tuesday after he missed a deadline to hand them over to authorities, prompting widespread speculation that he may have left Brazil.
Sources told BBC Brasil and BBC Mundo that Bolsonaro met with his younger brother, Eduardo, in Florida – though his exact travel route from Brazil to the US is unclear.
Neither brother could be directly reached for comment.
His reported arrival in the US came hours after a senior US official confirmed the US State Department would issue visas to Bolsonaro and his family and allow them entry into the country.
The BBC has contacted the White House, State Department and embassies in both the US and Brazil.
On Monday, Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered Bolsonaro to hand his passports over to police within 24 hours as part of its alleged money laundering probe.
At the time, Bolsonaro said he had no plans to leave the country, and insisted that he would stay in Brazil to lead the opposition to his left-wing rival, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who on Sunday won the election.
After he missed the deadline, Bolsonaro’s lawyers told BBC Brasil that they were “completely in the dark” about his whereabouts.
“We knew nothing about this, and we still have no information about what happened,” one lawyer said.
Bolsonaro has not made any public statements since Monday afternoon local time, when he posted a video on social media.
Federal officers checked border crossings to establish if Bolsonaro may have travelled to neighbouring Argentina, a police source told BBC News Brasil.
However, Argentine authorities told the BBC there was no record of the senator entering their country through any border crossing.
Bolsonaro was already under investigation for alleged corruption over the financing of a film about his father, former President Jair Bolsonaro, who was convicted of plotting a coup and is under house arrest.
A separate inquiry involves alleged links to a Brazilian lawyer, who is accused of laundering more than $1bn through a fraud scheme.
Police said earlier this month they had discovered Mr Bolsonaro had access to the bank accounts of a company owned by the lawyer.
Bolsonaro denied doing business with the lawyer, and described the passport confiscation as an attempt to intimidate him.
In addition to that investigation, Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered police on Tuesday to examine Flávio Bolsonaro’s electoral campaign over alleged foreign funding.
The 45-year-old senator suffered a stinging defeat on Sunday when he was beaten by Lula in a presidential run-off, which Bolsonaro had been widely expected to win.
His younger brother Eduardo Bolsonaro lives in the Texas, in the US, but was in Miami on Sunday, where he cast his vote at a polling station and attended an election viewing event which was streamed to his followers.
Sources have confirmed to the BBC that Flávio has already met with his brother, Eduardo, in Florida, though details of his exact travel route from Brazil are unclear.
It’s also unclear who travelled with him or whether Flávio Bolsonaro intends to stay and live in the US.
Opinion polls had put him narrowly ahead of Lula and analysts pointed out that Bolsonaro’s win in the first round of the election on 4 October, meant he was likely to take victory in the run-off.
But after an early lead in the count, he was overtaken by the veteran incumbent, who became the first presidential candidate to overturn a first round loss to win in the second round.
Lula won 51.79% of the vote, compared to Bolsonaro’s 48.21%.
Despite trailing by 4.4 million votes, Bolsonaro has not conceded and has called for the election to be annulled.
He argues that he was put at a disadvantage because polling was extended by two hours on election day – even though the extension was requested by both his party and that of his rival.
He called the extension, which was ordered by a Supreme Court justice, a “dirty trick”.
However the party he represented, the Liberal Party, has accepted the result, although it did say that the extension of voting “merits investigation”.
By BBC News
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