Report: Miami-based Argentine pilot brokered payment for Flávio Bolsonaro escape flight

An Argentine pilot and businessman based in Miami brokered the payment for the flight on which right-wing presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro fled Brazil, a source involved in the operation told the AFP news agency Thursday.

After losing the election to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Bolsonaro flew to the United States on October 28 aboard a private jet departing from Argentina, after Brazilian police cancelled his passports in connection with a money-laundering investigation.

The escape, which remains shrouded in unanswered questions, has heightened tensions between Brasília and the governments of Donald Trump and Javier Milei.

Accompanied by his wife and two daughters, the senator took off in the early hours of that day from the Argentine city of Puerto Iguazú aboard a plane operated by Argentine aviation company Baires Fly SA, which made a stopover in Guayaquil, Ecuador.

Baires Fly owner Luis Grande told AFP last week that he had been hired by a "broker" who "sells flights and lives in the United States".

Grande said he received a payment of US$150,000 into an Argentine bank account from a US account belonging to a company owned by the broker. He declined to identify the intermediary and said he did not know who had ultimately commissioned the flight.

A source involved in the operation, speaking on condition of anonymity, identified the intermediary as Fernando Martín Boye, an Argentine pilot and businessman who has been based in Miami for more than a decade.

Public records show Boye owns at least two business entities in Florida, Emerald Aviation and Huracan USA.

Two independent sources in the aviation industry told AFP that Boye and Grande are friends and have conducted other business together in the past.

AFP contacted Boye but received no response.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has insisted that Washington was not "directly" involved in the flight, which departed from the country governed by Milei, a close ally of Trump and Bolsonaro.

Argentine prosecutor Paloma Ochoa on Thursday requested the opening of an investigation to establish whether the Milei government used public resources to facilitate the flight, a judicial source told AFP.

Flávio Bolsonaro told The New York Times that "no government" had helped arrange the flight, adding that he would "take the secret to the grave."

US media reported last week that the aircraft may have been chartered following efforts by Jason Miller, a Trump adviser.

Lula has denounced attempts by the United States to interfere in Brazil's elections in favour of Bolsonaro, whose father, former president Jair Bolsonaro, is an ally of Trump.

Flávio Bolsonaro refused to acknowledge his election defeat and declared himself Brazil's true "leader" upon arriving in the United States.

– TIMES/AFP