Argentine immigration records show that a van carrying Menachem Booky Halevy and lawyer Roberto Jorge Alexandre crossed from Brazil about seven minutes before a van linked to senator Flávio Bolsonaro and his family. (Foto: Instagram)
Menachem Booky Halevy, described as a former officer of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, crossed from Brazil into Argentina with Roberto Jorge Alexandre, a lawyer who has represented Jair Bolsonaro, on the night senator Flávio Bolsonaro left Brazil. Argentine immigration documents reported by the Brazilian television program Fantástico on Sunday, Nov. 1, show that the van carrying Halevy and Alexandre passed through border control about seven minutes before another van associated with entry records for Flávio, his wife, Fernanda, and their two daughters.
Neri Luiz Dala Corte, the driver of the van carrying Halevy and Alexandre, said he had been hired to take two passengers to the airport in Puerto Iguazú, Argentina. He said the pickup was arranged at a gas station in Foz do Iguaçu, in the Brazilian state of Paraná. Flávio and his family used the airport to travel to Miami, in the United States.
Flávio left Brazil on Tuesday, Oct. 27, two days after losing the presidential election to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Before the departure, Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes had barred the senator from leaving Brazil and ordered him to turn over his passports to the Federal Police. Argentine immigration records cited by Fantástico list Flávio’s name three times that night, each time linked to the same van. The entries span 34 minutes.
The valid record was entered at 10:37 p.m. using an Italian passport. Two later entries were canceled: one at 10:40 p.m. using a driver’s license and another at 11:11 p.m. using a Brazilian passport. The border documents do not resolve questions about how Flávio traveled to Puerto Iguazú. Investigators’ leading hypothesis is that he flew there and waited on the airport tarmac for hours while his family made its way to join him.
Under one reconstruction of the trip, Flávio’s journey began at 5:05 a.m. Tuesday in Brasília aboard a jet linked to lawyer Willer Tomaz, a friend of the senator. The aircraft is believed to have landed at 8:40 a.m. in San Fernando, near Buenos Aires. A second private flight may then have carried him to Puerto Iguazú. Flávio is under investigation on suspicion of money laundering involving betting companies and payment platforms linked to Tomaz. The passport order and travel ban were issued as part of that inquiry.
Evidence being examined by the Federal Police includes emails that indicate Flávio had access to the bank account of a Tomaz company, as well as payments for the senator’s flights by another company linked to the lawyer. Flávio and Tomaz deny wrongdoing and say their relationship is only a friendship. Tomaz’s office told TV Globo that neither his aircraft nor a plane belonging to a company tied to his family was used to take Flávio or his relatives out of Brazil.
That account differs from a report published by the Argentine newspaper Clarín on Friday, Oct. 30. The newspaper said the family traveled more than 1,600 kilometers by road after an aircraft owner refused to make the flight. Argentina’s courts ordered authorities to preserve 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. In an interview with Agence France-Presse, Grande said an intermediary working in the U.S. aviation sector paid for the flight. The transfer reportedly went from an American business account to a bank in Argentina. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio denied that the U.S. government had any role in arranging Flávio’s departure.
