Brazil’s Foreign Ministry on Thursday summoned Argentina’s top diplomat in Brasília over how Flávio Bolsonaro, the right-wing candidate who lost Sunday’s presidential runoff, left the country through Argentina despite a court order barring him from leaving.
The diplomat, María Emilia Cortés, Argentina’s chargé d’affaires, was called in on Oct. 29, government sources told Reuters, according to Al Jazeera. Brazilian officials wanted to know what arrangements had let Mr. Bolsonaro cross into Argentina, and whether President Javier Milei’s government had helped get him to the United States, according to a Buenos Aires Times account of the meeting. Ms. Cortés was received by João Marcelo Galvão de Queiroz, who heads the ministry’s Mercosur department.
Brazilian diplomats said the point of the meeting was to register the government’s “discomfort.” The ministry declined to comment, and Brasília hasn’t announced any further steps against Argentina.
Argentina says the conversation it had was a different one. Pablo Quirno, the Argentine foreign minister, responded on X to a media report about the summons and wrote that “there was no request for explanation.” Mr. Milei has said nothing about the trip. His spokesman, Juan Pablo Carreira, called it a rescue on social media, saying his government had pulled Mr. Bolsonaro “from the claws of communism, which seeks to imprison all opposition figures.”
Mr. Bolsonaro, 45, a senator since 2019, was under orders to stay in Brazil because of a money-laundering investigation, and he had not complied with a Supreme Court order to hand over his passports within 24 hours, The Associated Press reported. Argentine authorities said he crossed a bridge into northern Argentina with his wife and two daughters on Tuesday evening and boarded a chartered plane. He flew to Miami by way of Ecuador and landed on Wednesday. An Argentine judge has ordered that camera footage of the crossing be preserved.
Once in Miami, he called himself the “legitimate president-elect” of Brazil. He thanked Mr. Milei for help he did not describe, and thanked President Trump.
He’s the target of two corruption and money-laundering inquiries. One is tied to the collapse of Banco Master, in which investigators are examining a multimillion-dollar payment from the bank’s former head, Daniel Vorcaro, that was allegedly meant to fund a film about his father, former President Jair Bolsonaro. Mr. Bolsonaro denies wrongdoing and calls the case political.
He lost the runoff by more than four million votes. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took 51.8 percent and won a fourth, nonconsecutive term. Mr. Bolsonaro has not conceded, though his Liberal Party has accepted the result. He has said, without evidence, that a Supreme Court decision extending voting hours hurt right-leaning regions. Both campaigns had asked for extensions: his side cited bad weather, and Mr. Lula’s party pointed to efforts to restrict public transportation.
Mr. Trump and Mr. Milei have both openly backed the Bolsonaro family. Mr. Trump has suggested the election was “rigged” while saying he would not “take sides.” He earlier imposed sanctions and tariffs on Brazil over the prosecution of the elder Mr. Bolsonaro, who was convicted of plotting a coup against Mr. Lula and sentenced to 27 years.
Relations between Mr. Lula and Mr. Milei have been tense since the Argentine leader took office in 2023. They got worse this year after Mr. Milei attacked Mr. Lula at a São Paulo event for Flávio Bolsonaro’s campaign. Both countries then recalled their ambassadors. Outlets disagree on when: The AP and The Rio Times put Brazil’s recall in July, while Reuters dated the downgrade to August.
Since then each country has been represented in the other’s capital by a chargé d’affaires, a lower rank. Ms. Cortés has led Argentina’s mission in Brasília since August, when Ambassador Daniel Raimondi left.