Former Mossad Agent Helped Flávio Bolsonaro Flee to the U.S.

The night on the bridge

On the night of Tuesday, October 27, two days after losing the runoff by 4.4 million votes and with his passports held by the Supreme Federal Court (STF), Brazil's top court, Flávio Bolsonaro crossed the Tancredo Neves bridge between Foz do Iguaçu and Puerto Iguazú. Seven minutes earlier, according to Argentine immigration records revealed by Fantástico, the TV Globo Sunday news magazine, on Sunday, November 1, another van had made the same trip. In it were driver Neri Luiz Dala Corte, lawyer Roberto Jorge Alexandre and Israeli Menachem Booky Halevy, a naturalized American, described as a former officer of the Mossad, Israel's secret service.

Halevy had entered Brazil on October 19 through Guarulhos airport, six days before the runoff. According to CNN Brasil, he accompanied the senator from Brasília to Argentina. The Federal Police (PF) is investigating him as a participant in the operation, which, according to the network, was planned internationally in advance and had an internal name: Alba.

Three documents in 34 minutes

On the Argentine side, the immigration system recorded Flávio three times in the same van: at 10:37 p.m., with an Italian passport; at 10:40 p.m., with a driver's license; at 11:11 p.m., with his Brazilian passport. The two records with Brazilian documents were canceled. The Italian one stood.

Argentine journalist Nicolás Munafó reported a police escort and official vehicles in the operation, including a pickup with diplomatic plates. At the Puerto Iguazú airport, a Gulfstream G400, registration LV-JQW, from the charter company Baires Fly was waiting. The company's owner, Luis Grande, told AFP the flight cost US$150,000, paid by an intermediary in the United States, and that he does not know who the final client was. The American press attributes the arrangement to Jason Miller, a strategist for Donald Trump. The jet refueled in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and landed at the Opa-locka executive airport in Miami on the morning of Wednesday, October 28. On disembarking, according to CNN, Flávio used the diplomatic passport that the PF had already canceled.

What each side says

Flávio posted, before Fantástico went on the air: “I didn't leave Brazil, I left through Brazil!” His lawyer, Frederick Wassef, said that no information about the trip is official and that there was no escape, without saying who paid for the jet. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio denied that the U.S. government helped and said the senator already had a visa. The Argentine government said it “has nothing to declare”; congresswoman Marcela Pagano pointed to irregularities in border control, and the country's courts ordered the border and airport footage preserved. The driver of Halevy's van said he had taken “two people I don't even know who they are.” Brazilian government sources heard by CNN call the operation an “exfiltration.”

What is not proven

The Mossad, as an institution, appears in no document. None of the sources points to involvement by the government of Israel, which has not commented, and Abestadão does not claim it: the headline says former agent because that is what the records show. Nor is it established what exactly Halevy did on the route, or who hired him; that is what the PF is trying to answer. The versions of the route diverge on one point: Fantástico records one line of investigation in which Flávio flew from Brasília to San Fernando, near Buenos Aires, and another in which he entered by land at Foz. The immigration records on the bridge, with the three documents, are what the two versions have in common.

This piece will be updated when the PF concludes its report or when Halevy, Israel or Flávio's defense comment.