Go Home, Flávio: America Is Not a Hideout for Brazil's Accused Criminals
Days after losing Brazil's presidency, Flávio Bolsonaro defied a court order and fled to Miami rather than face corruption and money-laundering investigations at home. The United States should not become his hideout. If he is innocent, he should go back and prove it.
On Wednesday morning, a private jet touched down at Opa-locka Executive Airport outside Miami. Out stepped Flávio Bolsonaro: Brazilian senator, defeated presidential candidate, and, as of this week, a man on the run from his own country’s courts.
Three days earlier, Brazilian voters turned him down in a runoff against President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Within 48 hours he had refused to concede, floated annulling the result, and ignored a Supreme Court order to hand over his passports by noon Tuesday. Instead of surrendering them, he slipped out through Argentina and landed on American soil, where the State Department has promised visas for him and his family.
Americans should be clear-eyed about what this is. It is not exile. It is not a dissident escaping tyranny. It is a politician running from a courtroom.
What he is running from
Brazil’s Supreme Court is investigating Flávio Bolsonaro in two cases involving alleged corruption, money laundering and tax evasion. One probe concerns large payments tied to Daniel Vorcaro, the former owner of Banco Master, who is jailed pending trial over a fraud estimated at roughly $7 billion. Another examines alleged laundering through a close associate tied to the sports-betting industry, including allegations that fraudulent deductions from seniors’ government pensions were washed through that business.
When the court ordered him to surrender his passports, it cited his flight risk and his significant financial resources. He then proved the court right.
He denies wrongdoing. Fine. That is exactly what courts are for. An innocent man with good lawyers and a clean ledger walks into the courthouse and makes his case. He does not climb aboard a private jet the moment the passport deadline arrives.
And the timing tells its own story. Had he won, Brazilian law would have shielded him from prosecution as a sitting president. He lost, and within days he was gone. That is not the behavior of a man confident he will be cleared. It is the behavior of a man who wanted the presidency as a legal shield and, failing that, chose a plane ticket. Call it what it is: cowardice.
Like father, like son
We have seen this movie before. In late December 2022, days before his term ended, Jair Bolsonaro skipped his successor’s inauguration and flew to Florida. While he waited out the storm in Orlando, his supporters stormed Brazil’s seat of government. He has since been convicted of plotting a coup and is serving a 27-year sentence. His son Eduardo moved to Texas, lobbied Washington for sanctions to pressure the court trying his father, and was himself sentenced in June to more than four years for coercion in judicial proceedings.
Twice now, Florida has served as the Bolsonaro family’s emergency exit. Flávio is the heir to his father’s politics, and apparently to his playbook as well.
Why Americans should object
The rule of law has to work both ways. The United States routinely asks other nations to send back people who flee American justice. We cannot credibly make that demand while rolling out the welcome mat for a foreign politician who defied a court order in his own country.
This is not our fight, but we will pay for it. Brazil is the largest democracy in Latin America and a major trading partner. Sheltering Bolsonaro deepens a growing rift between Washington and Brasília, and it hands Brazil’s government an easy argument that the United States meddles in its politics. Members of Congress are already demanding to know what role the administration played in his exit. Americans deserve those answers.
He asked for this entanglement. In March, at CPAC in Texas, Flávio Bolsonaro asked the American right to pressure Brazilian institutions ahead of his own country’s election. A politician who invites foreign interference at home and then seeks foreign refuge when the votes go against him should not find a soft landing here.
South Florida is not a hideout. Our communities are proud homes to Brazilian Americans and to people from every corner of the hemisphere who came here to build lives under the law, not to escape it. We should not become the go-to sanctuary for the region’s accused politicians.
A test of his own words
Flávio Bolsonaro has spent this campaign presenting himself as a man of his word and a man of the people. Nearly 60 million Brazilians trusted him with their votes. Words like that come with obligations.
A man of his word does not promise to respect his country’s institutions and then ignore its highest court the moment a ruling goes against him. A man of the people does not demand that ordinary Brazilians obey the law while he flies off to Miami to avoid it. The people he claims to represent cannot board private jets when the courts call their names. They show up, they hire a lawyer if they can afford one, and they face the judge.
If Flávio Bolsonaro truly is the leader he says he is, the path is simple: get back on a plane, land in Brasília, walk into the courthouse, and fight to clear his name in the open. If the accusations are false, let him prove it before the country that nearly made him president. That is what real leadership looks like, and it is the very least the people of Brazil deserve.
Equal before the law
Every ordinary Brazilian citizen who is accused of a crime has to answer for it in a Brazilian courtroom. A senator with a second passport and access to a private jet should be held to the same standard, not a lower one.
Congress should demand a full accounting of how this happened. The State Department should reconsider these visas. And Americans who believe in equal justice should tell their representatives so.
Go home, Flávio. If you are innocent, prove it where the charges were filed.