The defense of Flávio Bolsonaro, a senator from Rio de Janeiro who was defeated in the presidential election, has appealed a decision by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordering him to surrender his passports on Sunday, October 25. The lawyers are seeking to overturn the measure.
In the same ruling, Moraes prohibited contact between Flávio Bolsonaro and attorney Willer Tomaz and ordered the cancellation of all Brazilian passports held by the senator, including his diplomatic passport.
According to the report, Flávio Bolsonaro did not comply with the order and left Brazil. The senator, his wife and their daughters arrived in the United States on Wednesday, October 28. The aircraft carrying the family landed at an airport in Miami, Florida.
The investigation initially began in a federal court in Rio Grande do Sul and examined suspected crimes including money laundering, foreign-exchange evasion and the alleged use of betting companies in the scheme. The case was transferred to the Supreme Court after Flávio Bolsonaro’s name appeared in an investigation by the state’s Federal Police.
Flávio Bolsonaro is also formally under investigation in a separate inquiry into possible crimes connected to the financing of “Dark Horse,” a film about the career of former president Jair Bolsonaro.
His lawyers have further asked for the investigation targeting Flávio Bolsonaro and Willer Tomaz to be removed from Moraes’s docket and reassigned to Justice André Mendonça. The defense argues that the alleged structure linked to Tomaz, the money-laundering hypothesis and possible organized-crime offenses are also being examined in another investigation, known as Operation Sem Desconto, which concerns alleged fraud involving Brazil’s social security system and is overseen by Mendonça.
The defense also wants Moraes to be declared disqualified from conducting the investigation or, alternatively, considered biased and removed from the case. The lawyers claim that Moraes cannot oversee an investigation involving Fraction 024 because of alleged documented and public links between the company, the law firm of his wife, Viviane Barci de Moraes, and the justice himself.
Willer Tomaz was one of Fraction 024’s partners. A stake in the company was later acquired by Prime You, a firm whose partners included former banker Daniel Vorcaro.
Sources: G1.