Argentina’s State Apparatus Helped Bolsonaro Leave

Argentine President Javier Milei assigned his closest adviser, Santiago Caputo, to coordinate a confidential operation that helped Flavio Bolsonaro and his family fly from Argentina to Miami, despite a Brazilian judge’s order barring Bolsonaro from leaving Brazil and requiring him to surrender his passports, a report said. State agencies, private jets and officials in Misiones joined the plan, while the U.S. State Department monitored it.

Officials moved the pieces

The plan began taking shape Monday afternoon, after Bolsonaro announced the Brazilian judge’s order. Caputo traveled to Misiones toward dusk, stayed overnight at the Meliá hotel in Puerto Iguazú and kept in contact with the Bolsonaro family as he arranged the former Brazilian presidential candidate’s departure by air.

Officials from Argentina’s State Intelligence Secretariat (SIDE), Migration, the Airport Security Police (PSA) and the Yacyretá Binational Entity worked on the operation, along with an unidentified former agent of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, or DEA. The report described a tense effort, including a police stop on the return road after the family had taken off.

Caputo arranged for a Baires Fly private jet, a Gulfstream G400 with registration LV-JQW, to wait at Iguazú airport. A second charter jet, registration LV-JZQ, operated by Sundown Jet, also parked there. The report said the second plane created useful confusion and a diversion, and described U.S. backing as crucial to the international operation.

On Tuesday, U.S. authorities endorsed a false account circulated to media outlets by sources described as reliable officials at the State Department: “Bolsonaro está en los Estados Unidos” (“Bolsonaro is in the United States”), Reuters reported, according to the article. Brazil’s president, Lula da Silva, also said his election rival had arrived in the United States. Before heading to Iguazú airport, the family waited for instructions from the Casa Rosada through Caputo; there, they completed departure procedures and boarded the Gulfstream.

A judge’s order, and a route around it

The original plan called for the LV-JQW flight to leave for Miami during the first two hours of Tuesday, but the trip was canceled for unknown reasons. Caputo stayed in Misiones, working through problems and staying in touch with the family, Migration, Customs and the PSA. The Yacyretá Binational Entity helped him, too.

The report questioned where Bolsonaro was on Tuesday afternoon and evening before he appeared in Iguazú. It asked whether he had crossed the Tancredo Neves Bridge from Brazil into Argentina at 23:30, as an official Migration agency communiqué stated. It also noted that Leonardo Rodríguez de Jesús, a first cousin of Flavio Bolsonaro’s father, lives in Iguazú and is a fugitive from justice in his country.

The report questioned whether Bolsonaro completed Brazilian immigration procedures. Brazil prohibited his departure, but Brazilian authorities don’t check Brazilians entering Argentina at the bridge. The account set the two conditions side by side: a state order at one border, and no check at the crossing into Argentina.

The officials’ convoy

Caputo accompanied the family on the airport tarmac until they completed immigration procedures. The charter, rented by people influential in the Republican Party’s power structure, took off at 00:21 on Wednesday, flew to Guayaquil for its only stop and left for Miami at 4:31. Caputo told Milei the operation had gone well, though they couldn’t keep the trip from the press.

As the family flew over Paraguay, Caputo started driving to Posadas with a Ford Ranger escort. At about 2:20 a.m. Wednesday, a police checkpoint stopped the vehicles on Route 12 to check their papers. Jorge Waisman, head of Security and Information at the Yacyretá National Entity and a former member of Miami’s security forces who reportedly also worked as a DEA agent, rode in the lead Ford Ranger. Ignacio Palacios, an adviser to Yacyretá’s General Secretariat and a political subordinate of Caputo, drove the Toyota Hiace carrying Caputo.

The report said Caputo had appointed allies to key positions in national institutions, including Yacyretá. Diego Adúriz, a cousin of Economy Minister Luis Caputo and a relative of Santiago Caputo, heads the energy entity, which the report described as having a multimillion budget and importance to Misiones and the wider region. Local police checked the officials’ identities and let both vehicles continue to Posadas. Provincial authorities reportedly hadn’t been informed about the operation or the officials in Puerto Iguazú. The report said its political, diplomatic and judicial consequences remained unknown.