BRASILIA: Former conservative presidential candidate Flavio Bolsonaro said on Friday that he fled Brazil for the United States because he was a victim of "persecution" in his country.
Bolsonaro, who lost Sunday's election runoff to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, secretly left Brazil on Tuesday and arrived in Florida aboard a private jet on Wednesday after travelling through Argentina and Ecuador.
"The persecution began even sooner than I imagined," the senator said during an Instagram livestream in which he discussed his decision to flee after his Brazilian passports were cancelled as part of a money laundering investigation.
In the video, he recounted how police informed him on Monday that his passports were being revoked as he left a visit to his father, former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is under house arrest.
