Defeated Brazilian candidate Flávio Bolsonaro banned from leaving country and ordered to surrender passports
A Brazilian supreme court justice barred senator Flávio Bolsonaro from leaving the country and ordered him to hand over his passports, hours after he lost the presidential election to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Brazil's far-right senator Flávio Bolsonaro, who lost Sunday's presidential election to the leftist president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has been banned from leaving the country and ordered to surrender all his passports. Supreme court justice Alexandre de Moraes issued the ruling just hours after the result. It matters because Bolsonaro's Senate term ends early next year, leaving him out of public office for the first time in 24 years and without the special jurisdiction that officeholders enjoy.
De Moraes also oversaw the trial of Flávio Bolsonaro's father, former president Jair Bolsonaro, for attempting a coup.
What the ruling says
The brief ruling refers only to a criminal case in which federal police are investigating the senator over his possible involvement in a money-laundering scheme. He is ordered to have no contact with his friend Willer Tomaz, a lawyer linked to betting companies that police suspect were used to launder about £680m. All of Bolsonaro's passports, including his diplomatic one, were cancelled and must be handed over within 24 hours.
Bolsonaro's response
Bolsonaro was first to speak publicly about the decision, before Brazilian media knew of it. In a video on social media he said federal police were waiting at the door as he left a visit to his father, who is under house arrest in Brasília. He said he believed the decision was based on an interview his brother Eduardo Bolsonaro, who lives in self-imposed exile in the US, gave a US podcast on Friday, saying he favoured the senator leaving Brazil if he lost. Flávio said: "I never said that."
He is also under investigation in a second criminal case over what happened to £20m that he was recorded asking a disgraced banker, accused of corruption, to provide for a biopic about his father.
Challenging the result
Like Jair Bolsonaro four years ago, Flávio has not conceded defeat. Folha de S.Paulo reported that allies and lawyers persuaded him to drop a plan to seek annulment of the election, telling him the argument was legally weak. He had claimed that a two-hour extension of voting harmed the election, although his own campaign had also argued for one. He has not publicly withdrawn the demand, and in the video said he would file another case to disqualify Lula's ticket over alleged abuse of economic power.
