Brazil just seized its defeated presidential candidate's passports
1 hour ago · 26 October 2026Share
Brazil's President-elect Jair Bolsonaro with U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton and other officials including senator-elect Flávio Bolsonaro. File photo.U.S. Consulate in Rio · Public domain
Brazil just took the losing candidate's passports.
Flavio Bolsonaro is a Brazilian senator. He just lost the presidential runoff to Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
And a few hours ago, federal police stopped him on a street in Brasília.
He was leaving his father's house. His father is Jair Bolsonaro, the former president. He's under house arrest, convicted over an attempted coup.
Flavio Bolsonaro says quote "I was ordered right on the street to hand over my passports, and I'm also prohibited from leaving the country".
So who ordered this? Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes.
And the order doesn't mess about. It cancels every Brazilian passport Bolsonaro has. Including his diplomatic one. He's got 24 hours to hand over every travel document he owns. That includes an Italian passport he also holds.
The order does one more thing. It bans him from contacting Willer Tomaz. Tomaz is a lawyer being investigated alongside him.
So why does Moraes think Bolsonaro might run?
It comes down to a money-laundering investigation. Bolsonaro and Tomaz are accused of irregular dealings in the betting business. Police records name Bolsonaro as a registered "master user" of a Santander bank account linked to companies tied to Tomaz. One of them is called Alcazar Holdings.
And here's the thing. This investigation isn't new.
Three days ago, before the runoff even happened, Moraes froze up to 6 billion reais of Tomaz's assets. He lifted Tomaz's banking and tax confidentiality. He took Tomaz's passports too.
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Long exposure picture of the Brazilian Supreme Court, viewed from the Planalto Palace. File photo.Falcão Alado · CC BY-SA 4.0
So the case itself isn't new. What's new is the timing. The travel ban landed on Bolsonaro one day after he lost the election.
Bolsonaro says he was never going to flee. He says it's an attempt to intimidate him, and he's called it an aberration.
He says Moraes built the order around something his brother said. Eduardo Bolsonaro, on a podcast three days ago, said Flavio should leave Brazil if he lost. Flavio Bolsonaro says he never said that himself, and never planned to leave at all.
So how did Lula win? 51.79% of the vote. Bolsonaro got 48.21%.
Bolsonaro still hasn't conceded. He's also disputing a separate decision, by Justice Cristiano Zanin, to extend voting by two hours.
And before Moraes even issued the order, several lawmakers backing Lula's government had already asked the court to seize Bolsonaro's passport. Their names: Duda Salabert, Otoni de Paula, Rogério Correia.
Brian Winter runs Americas Quarterly. He says Bolsonaro is fighting an uphill battle, because Brazil's power brokers are lining up behind Lula. Some of them reluctantly. But most don't want a long fight over the result.
There's another case too. A separate Supreme Court inquiry, run by a different justice, into the financing of a film called Dark Horse. It involves a banker and a bank under scrutiny. Bolsonaro denies wrongdoing there as well.
Brazil's Supreme Court hasn't responded to requests for comment. Neither has the federal police.
So what don't we know? Whether the order was signed before or after the runoff result was confirmed. Bolsonaro says it was signed while counting was still going on — but that's his account, not something the court has confirmed. The full legal reasoning hasn't been published. And nobody knows yet whether other opposition figures will face the same restrictions.
Right now, here's where things stand. Bolsonaro has no passport. He's banned from speaking to his co-defendant. And the government he just lost to is the one holding the paperwork.
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