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Brazilian police are investigating whether a network of agents from the United States, Argentina and Israel helped former presidential candidate Flavio Bolsonaro flee the country after his election defeat, Anadolu Agency reported on Saturday, citing The Washington Post and an anonymous senior Brazilian official.
The official said a former agent of Israel’s Mossad intelligence service was seen following the van carrying Bolsonaro toward the Argentine border.
Bolsonaro, who lost the presidential runoff to Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, declined to describe his journey in an interview with The Washington Post.
“I will never speak about the path that I took,” he said, declining to answer whether US officials had helped him leave Brazil.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio rejected speculation about Washington’s involvement, saying the “US government was not involved directly in any of the moves that were made.”
Bolsonaro said he chose to seek refuge in the United States because he believes Brazil’s democratic institutions no longer function properly and that he could face arrest for expressing his political views.
“American institutions still work. While in Brazil, they no longer function,” he said.
He also claimed that US President Donald Trump shared his assessment of Brazil’s political situation.
“Trump is convinced that Brazil is no longer a full democracy,” he said.
Bolsonaro has repeatedly questioned the election’s integrity without presenting evidence. He also disputed electoral authorities’ assessment that the vote was fair.
“I guarantee to you that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Bolsonaro said, referring to the president of Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court.
“Not me, not you, not anyone who is watching, and not the president of the Superior Electoral Court can say with 100 percent certainty that there wasn’t fraud,” he added.
Bolsonaro said his father, former President Jair Bolsonaro, was terrified after Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered him to surrender his passports amid a money-laundering investigation.
Recalling their final conversation before he left, Bolsonaro said his father looked at him with tears in his eyes and told him: “You already know where this is going.”
“I told him that I knew, and that I knew what I had to do,” Bolsonaro said.
The elder Bolsonaro was convicted and sentenced to 27 years in prison for plotting a coup after his defeat in the 2022 election.
Brazilian police have expressed little hope of bringing his son back from the United States. The senior security official described the chances of capturing him as “zero.”
