Flávio Bolsonaro's escape route and the 24 years before it

On October 4, Flávio finished the first round in first place, with 56.1 million votes (47.03% of valid votes), against 45.16% for Lula.

In the runoff on October 25, Lula won 51.79% and Flávio 48.21%: the first time in Brazil's current democratic period that the candidate trailing after the first round won the second. On election night Flávio said it was "impossible to recognise the result" and talked of seeking its annulment, without presenting evidence of fraud. The next day, according to CNN Brasil, he dropped the idea, and his party, the PL, said it accepted the result.

Seven minutes after the electoral court confirmed Lula's re-election, the Federal Police asked to seize his passports. Justice Moraes agreed that same night. Two days later he would be out of the country.

In the middle of the campaign, a second Supreme Court inquiry into Flávio came to light: the Federal Police are investigating suspected money laundering in his relationship with lawyer Willer Tomaz. The case grew out of an investigation into betting companies and fintechs and looks, among other things, at Flávio's trips paid for by Tomaz's companies.

On October 23, Justice Moraes froze up to R$ 6 billion from companies linked to Tomaz, who has been in Miami since August, and cancelled the lawyer's passports. That same day Eduardo Bolsonaro said on a US show that if his brother lost, he was in favour of him leaving the country.

It was in this inquiry that, on the night of October 25, the Federal Police pointed to a flight risk and Moraes ordered Flávio's passports seized and banned contact with Tomaz.

The only relationship between them is the friendship between the two families.

In May, The Intercept Brasil published audio of Flávio negotiating with banker Daniel Vorcaro, of Banco Master, over funding for "Dark Horse", a film about Jair Bolsonaro. According to the report, Vorcaro committed to US$ 24 million and sent about R$ 61 million to a fund in Texas linked to a lawyer close to Eduardo.

Flávio first denied it, then confirmed the request as "private sponsorship for a private film" and admitted visiting Vorcaro after the banker's first arrest. In September, Supreme Court documents showed that Justice André Mendonça had opened an investigation into Flávio in July for suspected money laundering, illegal currency transfers and corruption. The Federal Police describe him as Vorcaro's "direct interlocutor".

There isn't a cent of public money. Turn it inside out.

On July 25, the PL made Flávio's candidacy official at a convention in São Paulo, with a speech by Argentine president Javier Milei and an AI-generated video carrying a message from Jair Bolsonaro, who is barred from speaking in public.

Days earlier, at a lunch with diplomats from more than 40 countries, Flávio linked Brazilian voting machines to the company Smartmatic and asked for observers; the electoral court said the company supplies neither machines nor software to Brazil. On July 24, Brazil's foreign ministry refused visas to two State Department officials who wanted to discuss the election with electoral authorities.

In July, Justice Moraes suspended Flávio's visits to his father for 90 days after he posted a letter from Jair on social media.

In March, at a conservative conference in Texas, Flávio presented himself as "Bolsonaro 2.0" and asked the US to apply "diplomatic pressure" so that Brazilian institutions "work properly" in the election.

On May 26, off the official schedule, Donald Trump received him in the Oval Office, with Eduardo present. The next day Flávio met Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and asked for the PCC and CV gangs to be designated as terrorists. The State Department did so two days later. In June, Trump posted photos of the meeting days after proposing a 25% tariff on Brazilian goods.

We don't want interference in Brazil's elections.

On September 11, the Supreme Court's First Panel sentenced Jair Bolsonaro to 27 years and 3 months in prison for a coup attempt and other crimes. On November 22 he was taken into preventive custody after an attempt to tamper with his ankle monitor; in the decision, Justice Moraes cited the vigil Flávio had called outside his father's gated community. Three days later Jair began serving his sentence.

On December 5, Flávio announced that his father had handed him the "mission" of running for president. Two days later he said there was "a price" for him to drop out, then backed down. That same month the Senate passed the "Dosimetry" bill, which could reduce sentences for those convicted over the January 8 riots and the coup plot, and the Chamber stripped Eduardo of his seat for absences.

My price is Bolsonaro free and on the ballot; in other words, there is no price.

In March, Eduardo took leave from his seat to stay in the US and seek sanctions against Brazilian authorities. In July, Trump announced a 50% tariff on Brazil citing the case against Jair; the US revoked visas of Justice Moraes and his allies and sanctioned him under the Magnitsky Act. The sanctions were lifted in December.

Flávio tied the tariff to an amnesty. On August 4, Moraes put Jair under house arrest for breaking his social-media ban, citing a call from his father that Flávio played at a rally in Rio and posted on Instagram. According to Moraes, the post was later deleted to hide the violation.

It is up to us to prevent two atomic bombs from falling here in Brazil.

According to piauí magazine, in January 2025 Flávio, his wife and daughters flew from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to Brasília with Willer Tomaz on a fractionally owned business jet. A third of the plane belonged to Tomaz and another third to a company in which Daniel Vorcaro was a partner.

Between February and May that year, according to The Intercept, Vorcaro's payments began flowing to the Texas fund that would bankroll "Dark Horse". The Florida–Brasília route would be flown the other way 21 months later.

According to Agência Estado, Flávio and his brother Carlos ran the strategy of Alexandre Ramagem's (PL) campaign for mayor of Rio. Ramagem had headed the Abin intelligence agency under Bolsonaro.

On October 6, Eduardo Paes (PSD) was re-elected in the first round with 60.47% of valid votes, against 30.81% for Ramagem. In the Senate, Flávio was rapporteur of the so-called "Beaches Amendment" in the Constitution and Justice Committee, whose vote was postponed in December.

In January, Justice Alexandre de Moraes authorised searches against Alexandre Ramagem. According to the press, the Federal Police were looking into whether Abin had passed Flávio and his brother Jair Renan information about ongoing investigations, including the kickback case.

In July, in a new phase, the Federal Police said members of the so-called "parallel Abin" had monitored tax auditors linked to the investigation that started the case, looking for "dirt and political connections". Moraes released the audio of an August 2020 meeting at the presidential palace between Jair Bolsonaro, General Augusto Heleno, Ramagem and Flávio's lawyers.

Flávio was not at the meeting and does not appear as a formal suspect in the sources consulted.

It is a lie that Abin favoured me in any way, in any situation, in my 42 years of life.

With Lula back in the presidential palace, Flávio moved into opposition. On February 1, Rogério Marinho, the candidate he and the PL had launched, lost the Senate presidency to Rodrigo Pacheco by 49 votes to 32.

According to the Italian government's answer to the Italian Parliament in 2025, Flávio and Eduardo had their Italian citizenship by descent recognised in 2023. That is the passport that, in October 2026, would be beyond the Federal Police's reach.

Flávio coordinated Jair Bolsonaro's re-election campaign and had been the PL's leader in the Senate since June. When his father lost to Lula on October 30, he was the first to acknowledge the result on social media, while Jair stayed silent.

Nine days later, Flávio and Eduardo went to the Italian embassy in Brasília about their Italian citizenship. He said the process had been under way since September 2019; the Italian government confirmed the two had joined the consular queue in 2020.

Let's hold our heads high and not give up on Brazil!

With the evidence annulled by the Superior Court of Justice and the Supreme Court, Rio's own prosecutor-general asked for the charges to be annulled. On May 16, the Special Body of the Rio de Janeiro court rejected and closed them, for Flávio, Queiroz and 15 others.

The charges were never accepted by a court: Flávio never became a defendant and was never convicted. The evidence was not examined on its merits, and the decision did not prevent a new investigation with independent evidence. In February 2025, Justice Gilmar Mendes denied a request from Rio prosecutors to reopen the case.

The Superior Court of Justice had already annulled all the evidence. The defence considers the case buried.

2021 was the year the kickback case fell apart in the higher courts. On November 30, the Supreme Court's Second Panel kept the case with the Rio court's Special Body, by 3 votes to 1, and annulled four Coaf financial-intelligence reports requested by Rio prosecutors before Flávio was formally under investigation. The first report, on Queiroz's R$ 1.2 million, was kept.

That same day Flávio joined the PL, at the ceremony where his father joined the party. In six months he had been through three parties: he left Republicanos in May, moved to Patriota and ended up in the PL.

A public deed showed that Flávio and his wife, Fernanda, paid R$ 5.97 million for a house in Lago Sul, Brasília: R$ 2.87 million down and R$ 3.1 million financed over 360 months by BRB, the Federal District's public bank.

Part of the down payment came from the sale of the chocolate franchise that Rio prosecutors were investigating in the kickback case.

I sold a property I had in Rio de Janeiro, I sold a franchise I owned, also in Rio de Janeiro.

Rio's prosecutor-general charged Flávio, Queiroz and 15 others before the Rio court's Special Body with criminal organisation, embezzlement, money laundering and misappropriation, for acts from 2007 to 2018.

The charges describe Flávio as the leader and Queiroz as the operator, and estimate the loss to the Rio assembly at about R$ 6 million. A former aide told prosecutors she never actually worked in the office and handed almost all her salary back to Queiroz: about R$ 160,000 between 2011 and 2017.

In Operation Angel, Fabrício Queiroz was taken into preventive custody at a property owned by Frederick Wassef in Atibaia, São Paulo state. Wassef was then the lawyer for Flávio and Jair Bolsonaro. According to Rio prosecutors, "Angel" was what Queiroz and his relatives called Wassef, who left Flávio's defence three days later.

A week after the arrest, the Rio court recognised Flávio's special jurisdiction, because he was a state deputy at the time of the alleged acts, and took the case away from the first-instance judge. In July, Queiroz was moved to house arrest.

A fugitive since January 2019, the former Bope captain that Rio prosecutors described as the leader of the Rio das Pedras militia and the "Crime Office" was killed in a police operation in Esplanada, in rural Bahia. The official version speaks of a shoot-out; his family disputed it.

Adriano had been honoured twice by Flávio in the Rio assembly, and his mother and then wife had worked in the senator's office. Days later, Jair Bolsonaro said Adriano was a "hero" when he was honoured.

There are people rushing Adriano da Nóbrega's cremation to make the evidence that he was brutally murdered in Bahia disappear.

On December 18, Rio prosecutors carried out 24 search warrants, including at Flávio's chocolate franchise. In their request they said Queiroz received R$ 2,062,360.52 in 483 deposits from 13 office employees, 69% of it in cash, and that accounts linked to Adriano da Nóbrega were used in the scheme.

It had been a year of back-and-forth in the Supreme Court. In July, at Flávio's request, Justice Dias Toffoli suspended nationwide all investigations opened with Coaf data shared without a court order. In September, Justice Gilmar Mendes suspended his. In November, the full court cleared the use of the data.

Also in November, Flávio left the PSL with his father and became vice-president of Aliança pelo Brasil, a party that was never registered.

I have nothing to do with it. They all worked.

On February 1, Flávio was sworn in as a senator and left the Rio assembly after 16 years; days later he was elected third secretary of the Senate's governing board.

The previous month had been full of revelations. Coaf data showed 48 cash deposits of R$ 2,000 into his account in 2017, made at an ATM inside the Rio assembly. On January 22, Operation The Untouchables targeted the Rio das Pedras militia and Adriano da Nóbrega, who fled. The same day, O Globo revealed that Adriano's mother and wife had worked as Flávio's aides until November 2018.

I remain the victim of a smear campaign aimed at hitting Jair Bolsonaro's government.

A month after Operation Furna da Onça hit members of the Rio assembly, Estadão revealed a Coaf report showing atypical transactions of R$ 1,236,838 in Fabrício Queiroz's account between January 2016 and January 2017, including a R$ 24,000 cheque to Michelle Bolsonaro.

Queiroz, a military police officer and Flávio's driver and bodyguard, had been dismissed in October. Rio prosecutors opened proceedings based on the report: it was the start of the Queiroz case.

Fabricio Queiroz worked with me for more than ten years and always had my trust. I never knew of anything that would discredit his conduct.

Running for the PSL, the party the family adopted that year, Flávio won 4,380,418 votes (31.36% of valid votes) and came first in Rio's Senate race.

On the same day his father made it to the presidential runoff, which he would win on October 28. Four months later Flávio would swap the Rio assembly for Brasília.

In March, Flávio left the PP with his father and his brother Carlos, after 11 years in the party, and joined the PSC, which would launch Jair as a presidential pre-candidate.

In the Rio mayoral election he won 424,307 votes (14%) and came fourth, behind Marcelo Crivella, Marcelo Freixo and Pedro Paulo. In the runoff he backed Crivella, who won.

In 2014 Flávio was re-elected for a fourth term with 160,359 votes, according to electoral court data: the third most-voted state deputy in Rio.

Between late 2014 and March 2015 (sources differ on the date) he became a partner, with Alexandre Santini, in a Kopenhagen chocolate franchise in a Barra da Tijuca mall, bought for about R$ 1 million.

In 2010 Flávio was re-elected for a third term and began living with dentist Fernanda Antunes Figueira, with whom he has two daughters.

In November 2012 the couple bought two apartments in Copacabana, for R$ 140,000 and R$ 170,000, from an American, and resold them in 2013 and 2014 for R$ 573,000 and R$ 550,000.

Can't I buy cheaper?

Re-elected in 2006 with 43,099 votes, according to electoral court data, and with a law degree from Universidade Candido Mendes, Flávio began his second term in the Rio assembly.

2007 is the starting point of the alleged "rachadinha" (salary kickback) scheme described years later by Rio prosecutors: office employees would hand back part of their salaries, collected by Fabrício Queiroz, who already worked with him. That same year Danielle da Nóbrega, then Adriano's wife, was hired in the office on Queiroz's recommendation and stayed until November 2018.

In October 2003, in his first term, Flávio proposed a motion of praise for military police lieutenant Adriano da Nóbrega, for his "dedication, brilliance and gallantry".

In June 2005 he proposed giving him the Tiradentes Medal, the Rio assembly's highest honour. Adriano had been in preventive custody since January 2004, accused of murder. The honour was approved in August and delivered at the Special Prison Battalion.

Adriano was convicted in October 2005, had the jury verdict annulled and was acquitted in 2007. Years later he would be described as a militia boss.