BRASÍLIA (The Thursday Times) — Brazil has summoned Argentina’s top diplomat in the country to explain how defeated presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro was able to slip through Argentina on his way to the United States in defiance of a court order, deepening a rift between President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Argentina’s Javier Milei.
Brazil’s foreign ministry called in Argentina’s chargé d’affaires, María Emilia Cortés, on Thursday, government sources told Reuters. Argentine Foreign Minister Pablo Quirno denied on social media that Buenos Aires had received any formal request for explanations.
Bolsonaro, the son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, fled late on Tuesday with his wife and two daughters, crossing into northern Argentina before boarding a chartered plane that flew via Ecuador to Miami. He had been ordered to surrender his passports and stay in Brazil as part of the Banco Master money-laundering investigation, in which he is accused of receiving a multimillion-dollar payment from the bank’s former head, Daniel Vorcaro, allegedly to finance a film about his father. He denies wrongdoing.
Lula won Sunday’s run-off with 51.8 per cent of the vote, a margin of more than four million votes, securing a fourth term. Bolsonaro has refused to concede and, after landing in Miami, declared himself the “legitimate president-elect”, citing a Supreme Court decision to extend voting hours, although his own Liberal Party has accepted Lula’s victory. Both Milei and US President Donald Trump have openly backed the Bolsonaro family.
