Brazil's Police Moved to Seize Flávio Bolsonaro's Passports 7 Minutes After He Lost. Moraes Signed Off That Night

Brazil's Federal Police didn't wait long. At 9:16 p.m. Sunday, seven minutes after the election court's system confirmed President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva had won, police digitally signed a request asking Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes to take the passports of the man Lula had just beaten, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro.

Moraes said yes that same night, without first asking the prosecutor general's office, according to the 16-page police request obtained by O Globo's Malu Gaspar column. By Monday morning, officers were serving Flávio in the street outside his father's house.

That timing is the story. Police had a case on Flávio for weeks. They moved in the first minutes after the count was final.

A night that was already contested

This all happened on a night Flávio was already refusing to accept. One minute after polls closed at 5 p.m., Justice Cristiano Zanin, Lula's personal lawyer until Lula put him on the Supreme Court, ordered two more hours of voting nationwide at the request of Lula's coalition. The president of the election court, Kassio Nunes Marques, said the order arrived after polls had closed and "created difficulties in the electoral process." He said there had never been a ruling like it before, and that there was no rule "that authorized any extension," Agência Brasil reported. Flávio refused to concede and said he'd challenge the result.

The official count from the election court, the TSE, has Lula at 51.8% to Flávio's 48.2%. What officials still haven't explained is why the same night's paperwork moved so fast in one direction.

What Moraes ordered

The decision is sealed. CNN Brasil obtained it, and Folha and g1 described the same three orders. Moraes canceled every Brazilian passport in Flávio's name, including his diplomatic one, and declared them "rendered void." He gave Flávio 24 hours to hand over any foreign passports, told police to put a migration alert on him in the border-control system, and barred him from contacting his friend, lawyer Willer Tomaz, "by any means, directly or through another person."

Think of it as a travel ban slapped on the runner-up before the winner had finished his victory lap.

The three reasons police gave

According to O Globo's account of the request, police leaned on three points. First, a podcast. On Oct. 23, Flávio's brother Eduardo Bolsonaro, who lives in the United States, said: "If my brother doesn't win, I'm in favor of him leaving the country." Eduardo said it while pointing to Lula's own campaign line that Flávio would lose, lose his immunity and be investigated by police.

Second, a bank account. Police say Flávio was listed as a "master user" on an account belonging to Alcazar Holding, a company Tomaz keeps on Portugal's Madeira island, until a May 2025 email asked that his access be removed. Third, Tomaz himself, who police say has been in Miami since Aug. 25 and "has sufficient financial resources to remain abroad indefinitely."

The underlying case is about Tomaz. Moraes is overseeing a probe into whether Tomaz laundered money from Rio de Janeiro's state lottery through a payments company and a string of other firms, including betting sites. Last Friday, Moraes froze up to 6 billion reais of Tomaz's assets. Flávio is one of the targets of that probe, which O Globo says is still at an early stage. He and Tomaz say they're friends, not partners, and deny any wrongdoing.

The jet with the judge's wife in it

Here's the detail that should stop anyone cold. Police tie Flávio to Alcazar partly through a business jet. In January 2025, he flew from the U.S. to Brazil on a Legacy 500 that Alcazar owned a third of. Another co-owner of that same plane was Daniel Vorcaro of Banco Master. And according to the Federal Police's own findings, as O Globo reported, Vorcaro handed his share to Viviane Barci de Moraes, the wife of Justice Moraes, as payment for unspecified legal services.

So the justice who grounded Flávio is ruling on a case built partly around a plane whose ownership trail, by the police's own account, runs through his wife. Moraes is still the judge on the case. He's also the same justice the U.S. Treasury sanctioned under the Global Magnitsky Act in July 2025. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent accused him of "an oppressive campaign of censorship, arbitrary detentions that violate human rights, and politicized prosecutions—including against former President Jair Bolsonaro." The Treasury's release listed this exact move: Moraes, it said, "has frozen assets and revoked passports of his critics."

Flávio: 'Is this justice?'

Flávio posted a video Monday. "This morning I went to visit my father. As you know, he's under house arrest," he said. "And when I was leaving, Lula's Federal Police were at the door of his house, and in the middle of the street I was served to hand over my passports, and I'm also barred from leaving the country."

"I never said that," he said of his brother's remark. "Is that a reason to take my passport? Is that justice? And what's more, this decision was made Sunday night, right after the election result was announced. Think with me: if I had won the election, would the same thing have happened?"

"I never thought of leaving the country," he said. "I'm going to hand over my passports and defend myself against this aberration, which is a clear attempt to intimidate me, but no one is going to silence me." (Quotes translated from Portuguese.)

His father, former President Jair Bolsonaro, is serving a sentence of more than 27 years under house arrest after the same Supreme Court convicted him of plotting a coup.

What officials haven't explained

O Globo asked the Supreme Court what time Moraes signed the order. The court didn't say. Nobody has explained why the request had to be filed within minutes of the final count, why Moraes skipped the prosecutor general, or why a justice whose wife appears in the case's jet trail is the one deciding it.

The case reached the Supreme Court on Oct. 8, when Moraes was drawn as its judge, g1 reported. It sat there through the last two and a half weeks of a presidential campaign. The passport request came seven minutes after Flávio lost.

What's next

Flávio says he'll comply and fight the order in court. He's also said he'll ask the election courts to throw out the Lula ticket for abuse of political and economic power. His Senate term ends in early 2027, when he loses the special standing that keeps his cases at the Supreme Court, though a 2025 high court ruling means cases tied to his time in office can stay there. Until a judge says otherwise, the man who got 48% of Brazil's vote can't leave the country.