The Gaucho James Bond and Bolsonaro’s escape

The day after Flávio Bolsonaro lost Brazil’s run-off in spectacular fashion, he was barred from leaving the country and ordered to surrender his passport. The ruling came from Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes – the same judge who had put his father, Jair Bolsonaro, behind bars – and was tied to a money-laundering case. The far-right candidate had just lost the second-round against Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who incredibly reversed a first-round defeat to secure re-election and a record fourth term as Brazil’s President. After a visit to his father who is serving time in home imprisonment in Brasília, Bolsonaro was told to hand over his passports. Less than 24 hours later, he managed to cross the border to Argentina, where an operation cleared by President Javier Milei and personally led by controversial political advisor Santiago Caputo, saw him get on a private jet to Miami, travelling via Ecuador in order to avoid Brazilian airspace.

The story could read like a thriller, if it wasn’t pathetic in a cartoonish kind of way. It is also a tale of our times, in which politics is increasingly becoming an extreme sport where the returns of ill-gotten gains can be enormous, while the risks to everyone involved generally include prison. Especially for the loser – both Lula and Jair Bolsonaro have suffered the wrath of the courts, as has Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in Argentina, and many others across the continent, particularly in Peru. That the courts are tainted and politically motivated is nothing new, “lawfare,” as it has come to be known, has been a defining characteristic of Latin American politics for decades. In Brazil, in particular, it has targeted both left- and right-leaning candidates. That’s not to say that most of these politicians are clean, quite the contrary – there is ample evidence of many of them filling their pockets as they claim to be crusading for the people’s causes.

Flávio Bolsonaro posted a video to his social media accounts describing how he had been confronted by police and ordered to surrender his passports and responded defiantly that it was an attempt to politically pressure him. He would lead the opposition from the motherland, he told his followers. Over the next hours, reports that Flávio had left the country were routinely denied by news outlets of all sizes and colours, until at a certain point the major papers and agencies confirmed he was already in the United States. But he wasn’t – he hadn’t even left Brazil.

At around 10:50pm on Tuesday, October 27, Flávio, his wife and their two daughters crossed into Argentina via the Tancredo Neves Bridge that connects the Brazilian city of Foz de Iguaçu with Puerto Iguazú. Argentine immigration authorities confirmed they entered the country legally, presenting valid documentation. They were escorted by Argentine Airport Security Police, a federal force, and taken to the airport. An hour later, they had boarded a private jet owned by Baires Fly SA, an airplane chartering company with connections to recent scandals in Argentina, and departed.

It began to get weird in Argentina earlier than that. Less than 24 hours before (October 27 at 2am), the Infobae news site published an article identifying the plane that was going to be used as a Gulfstream G400 with tail number LV-JQW. In the recent past it had taken football superstar Lionel Messi and Argentine Football Association (AFA) President Claudio ‘Chiqui’ (aka. “Tiny”) Tapia, as well as other luminaries, on trips. Argentine authorities denied that the Bolsonaros had entered the country throughout the day, only to confirm it later when he’d already been and gone. It was a victory lap for the Milei administration as it had played a central part in the operation to get their dear friend Flávio out of Brazil, where he faced high chances of being detained, and into the ‘oasis that is Florida under the auspices of Donald Trump. But someone had jumped the gun, putting the whole operation in jeopardy, and the traditionally friendly outlet Infobae had pushed it, along with multiple other stories about the jet throughout the day.

Once the Bolsonaro family was safely out of the country, a fuller picture of the Argentine operation emerged. Santiago Caputo, the aforementioned advisor with no official government role but who is credited with controlling, among other things, the SIDE spy intelligence services, had reportedly been spotted in Misiones Province since Monday. Caputo is, or at least was, connected to former spy Leonardo Scatturice, who Noticias magazine has shown in its reporting has deep ties with both the MAGA world in the United States and Daniel Hadad, owner of Infobae. A few hours after the Gulfstream taking Flávio and his family took off, Caputo’s convoy was stopped for a roadside check by Highway Patrol in the remote town of Capiovi, about 200 kilometres from Iguazú. The convoy consisted of two white vehicles, a Ford Ranger SUV and a Toyota Hiace, the latter reportedly with diplomatic plates. Both drivers were employed by the operating company of the Yacyretá dam, one of them is reportedly a dual Argentine-US citizen, and at least one person identified themselves as a member of the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). If the operation had gone awry, Caputo would suffer the most harm, raising red flags as to why his supposed allies would sabotage him. At the same time, he’s a man of tales and narratives, and showing himself playing the role of a ‘Gaucho James Bond’ certainly feeds his ego. Counter-intuitively, both of these could be true at the same time.

The flight, which cost US$140,000 as Perfil’s Mauricio Caminos reported, was paid for by a broker in the United States. Once he had arrived, Flávio put out a letter that he had to rewrite three times. The most important edit was the one in which he went from proclaiming he was the “President” of Brazil to simply its “leader,” diluting the strength of the claim he would orchestrate the opposition to Lula from abroad. Asked about the situation, Trump indicated he felt as if the electoral process had been corrupted, but wouldn’t get involved in the matter beyond allowing Bolsonaro in. Major Brazilian outlets called the latter anti-democratic.

In Argentina, the opposition questioned Milei for putting his personal friendships and allegiances ahead of national interest. Brazil is Argentina’s largest trading partner and a member of the Mercosur trade bloc. Yet, the Milei administration has decided not to officially acknowledge Lula’s electoral victory, while actively abetting Flavio and his family in their escape in avoiding Brazilian legal orders and later bragged about it. It follows, of course, in the typical modus operandi of the Milei administration and its foreign policy based on total alignment with Trump and the political construction of a regional right-wing alliance.

The sequence of events is troubling. It starts with the Supreme Court’s horrible timing, by asking Flávio to surrender his passports, the day after the election. Making them look even worse, once they determined he was a flight risk, he escaped! It makes the ruling look politically motivated and execution sloppy. The spy operation on the Argentine side with Caputo playing the role was equally pathetic, given when they got stopped by Highway Patrol in a remote town near the border with Paraguay. The coverage in Infobae, popping the lid on the whole thing almost a full day before it happened, adds to the scandal. Flavio’s successive letters, forced to backtrack on his presidential aspirations probably by someone with a say in his residency status, adds the final touch.

More than a thriller, it reads like a farce. Unfortunately, it’s our reality.