The far-right senator Flávio Bolsonaro was banned from leaving Brazil and ordered to surrender his passports just hours after his dramatic loss in the presidential election to the leftist president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
The ruling was issued by supreme court justice Alexandre de Moraes, the same justice who oversaw the trial of the senator’s father, the former president Jair Bolsonaro, for attempting a coup.
Bolsonaro posted a video saying the decision was based on an interview his brother, Eduardo Bolsonaro, gave last Friday urging his brother to leave Brazil if he lost the election.
On Monday night, Bolsonaro’s party issued a statement acknowledging the election result, saying: “We recognise the presidential result proclaimed by the electoral court, but believe that the questions raised need to be properly clarified through a balanced and democratic political debate.”
Bolsonaro, like his father four years ago, has still not conceded defeat to Lula.
The court’s brief ruling regarding his passport only refers to a criminal case in which the federal police are investigating Flávio Bolsonaro over his possible involvement in a money-laundering scheme. The ruling orders him not to have any contact with his friend Willer Tomaz, a lawyer linked to betting companies that police suspect were being used to launder about £680m.
It also cancelled all of Bolsonaro’s passports, including the diplomatic one he holds as a congressman, and ordered him to hand them over within 24 hours.
Bolsonaro was the first to speak publicly about the matter, before Brazilian media were even aware of the judge’s decision.
In a video posted on social media, he said he had just left a visit to his father, who is under house arrest in Brasília, when “Lula’s federal police were at his door and in the middle of the street, and I was served with an order to hand over my passports and I am also prohibited from leaving the country”.
He added that, although his brother – who is in self-imposed exile in the US – told a US podcast on Friday that he favoured the senator leaving Brazil if he lost the election, “I never said that”.
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When his Senate term ends early next year, Bolsonaro will be out of public office for the first time in 24 years, and therefore without the special jurisdiction afforded to officeholders.
He is under investigation in another criminal case, too, over what happened to the £20m he was captured on tape asking a disgraced banker accused of corruption to provide for a biopic about his father.
The Folha de S.Paulo newspaper reported that Flávio Bolsonaro had been persuaded to drop his plan to seek to annul the election, which he had announced after the result was declared on Sunday night.
Bolsonaro had claimed that the two-hour extension of voting – intended to allow voters who had been unable to access the mandatory free public transport to cast their ballots – had harmed the election, despite the fact that his own campaign had also argued for an extension.
According to the newspaper, allies and lawyers told him his argument was legally weak.
Bolsonaro had still not publicly reversed his demand for an annulment, and in the same video he said he would file another case to have Lula’s ticket disqualified over alleged abuse of economic power, a similar case to others his legal team brought during the campaign.
