Brasilia (AFP) – An Argentine pilot and businessman based in Miami brokered the payment for the flight in which former right-wing candidate Flávio Bolsonaro fled Brazil, a source involved in the operation told AFP.

First modification: 06/11/2026 - 17:47

After losing the election against President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Bolsonaro left for the United States on October 28 on a private jet from Argentina, after Brazilian police canceled his passports in connection with a money laundering case.

The escape full of unknowns aggravates the tensions in Brasilia with the governments of Donald Trump and Javier Milei.

With his wife and two daughters, Senator Bolsonaro flew early that day from the Argentine city of Puerto Iguazú on a plane from the Argentine company Baires Fly, which made a stopover in Guayaquil, Ecuador.

Argentine businessman Luis Grande, owner of Baires Fly, told AFP last week that he was hired by "a broker" who "sells flights and lives in the United States."

Grande claimed that he received a payment of $150,000 in an Argentine bank account, from a US account of a broker company, but he refused to identify it and said he did not know the contractor behind it.

A source involved in the operation said under anonymity that the intermediary is the Argentine pilot and businessman Fernando Martín Boye, who has lived for more than a decade in Miami, where Bolsonaro landed.

Boye owns at least two business companies in the state of Florida, Emerald Aviation and Huracan USA, according to public records.

According to two independent sources in the aviation industry, Boye and Grande are friends and have done other business together in the past.

The AFP contacted Boye but did not receive a response.

The US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, assured that the United States was not "directly" involved in the flight that took off from the country of the ultra-liberal Milei, an ally of Trump and Bolsonaro.

Argentine prosecutor Paloma Ochoa asked this Thursday to open an investigation to find out if the Argentine government used public resources to facilitate the flight, a judicial source told AFP.

Flávio Bolsonaro assured The New York Times that "no government" helped in the management of the flight and that he will "take the secret about its organization to the grave."

American media published last week that the plane had been hired after efforts by Jason Miller, a Trump advisor.

Lula has denounced attempts at electoral interference by the United States in favor of Bolsonaro, whose father, former president Jair Bolsonaro, is a Trump ally.

Flávio Bolsonaro did not recognize his electoral defeat and proclaimed himself the true "leader" of Brazil upon arriving in the United States.

© 2026 AFP

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