Argentine immigration records show that a van associated with Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro crossed from Brazil about seven minutes after another van carrying two passengers, on the night he left the country. (Foto: Instagram)
Menachem Booky Halevy, an Israeli man described as a former Mossad officer, crossed from Brazil into Argentina with Roberto Jorge Alexandre, a lawyer who previously worked on Jair Bolsonaro’s defense, on the night Senator Flávio Bolsonaro left Brazil. Documents from Argentina’s immigration system, reported by the Brazilian television program Fantástico on Nov. 1, show that the van carrying Halevy and Alexandre passed through border control about seven minutes before a second van associated with Flávio, his wife, Fernanda, and their two daughters.
Neri Luiz Dala Corte, who drove the van carrying Halevy and Alexandre, said he had been hired to take two passengers to the airport in Puerto Iguazú. The passengers were to board in Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil, at a gas station. Flávio and his family used the Argentine airport to travel to Miami. Flávio left Brazil on Tuesday, Oct. 27, two days after losing the presidential election to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Before the trip, Supreme Federal Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes had barred the senator from leaving Brazil and ordered him to turn over his passports to the Federal Police.
The Argentine immigration records list Flávio three times that night, each entry linked to the same van. The first and last entries were 34 minutes apart. The entry that remained valid was recorded at 10:37 p.m. using an Italian passport. Later entries—at 10:40 p.m. using a driver’s license and at 11:11 p.m. using a Brazilian passport—were canceled.
The border records do not resolve questions about how Flávio reached Puerto Iguazú. Investigators’ leading theory is that he traveled by plane and waited for hours on the airport runway while his family made its way there. Under that reconstruction, the trip began at 5:05 a.m. Tuesday in Brasília, aboard a jet linked to Willer Tomaz, a lawyer and friend of Flávio. The aircraft is believed to have landed at 8:40 a.m. in San Fernando, near Buenos Aires, before a second private flight continued to Puerto Iguazú.
Flávio is under investigation on suspicion of money laundering involving betting companies and payment platforms linked to Tomaz. Evidence examined by the Federal Police reportedly includes emails indicating Flávio had access to a bank account belonging to one of Tomaz’s companies, as well as records of another company linked to the lawyer paying for flights used by the senator. Flávio and Tomaz deny wrongdoing and say their relationship is only one of friendship. Tomaz’s representatives told TV Globo that neither his aircraft nor planes belonging to companies connected to his family were used by Flávio or his relatives to leave Brazil.
That denial differs from an account published by Argentine newspaper Clarín on Oct. 30. The newspaper reported that the family traveled more than 1,600 kilometers by road after an aircraft owner declined to make the flight. Argentina’s judicial authorities ordered the preservation of surveillance footage from the border and airport. Baires Fly, the Argentine company that transported the family to the United States, received $150,000 for the trip, according to its owner, Luis Grande. Grande told Agence France-Presse that an intermediary working in the U.S. aviation industry paid for the flight, with funds transferred from an American business account to a bank in Argentina. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio denied that the U.S. government had been involved in arranging Flávio’s departure.
