Charter Owner Says US-Based Broker Paid US$150,000 for Flávio Bolsonaro's Gulfstream G400 Flight to Miami

Luis Grande, an Argentine businessman who owns the charter company Baires Fly, said on Thursday 29 October 2026 that a broker based in the United States booked and paid for the private jet that carried Brazilian senator Flávio Bolsonaro out of South America. Speaking by phone from an apartment he owns in Florida, Grande said the broker sent US$150,000 (about BRL 800,000) from his company's account at a US bank to an Argentine bank.

Grande said he was hired by a broker he has known for ten years, who sells private flights, lives in the United States and holds both Argentine and US citizenship. He refused to name the broker. He said he does not know who hired the broker, and that the broker told him he did not know that person before the job either.

Argentina's migration directorate says Bolsonaro, his wife and two daughters crossed the Tancredo Neves Bridge into Argentina at 10:50 p.m. They boarded a Baires Fly Gulfstream G400, stopped in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and landed in Miami on Wednesday 28 October.

Bolsonaro is a Brazilian senator and the son of former president Jair Bolsonaro. He lost the 25 October runoff to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Brazil's Supreme Court had ordered him to hand over his passports in a sealed money-laundering inquiry, in which he denies wrongdoing. The Federal Police said no record shows him crossing a Brazilian border post.

Grande's account is his alone. No bank record, court filing or government statement has confirmed it, and the broker's identity and the person who ordered the flight remain unknown. The structure he describes is a familiar one in charter: an operator hired by an intermediary who sells flights, who in turn may have been hired by someone else, so that the party paying and the party flying can be several steps apart.

That layering is why the payment trail matters more than the aircraft. A charter operator typically sees the broker's contract and the incoming funds, while the passenger manifest and the origin of the money sit with different parties. Where a client is under judicial restrictions, the question of who knew what at each step is one that records, not recollection, would settle.

Paying for a charter flight is not a crime in itself, and no authority has said publicly that this payment broke any law. No US or Brazilian authority has publicly said who paid for the flight or whether it is examining the payment. Any statement from either side on the payment, or from Bolsonaro on who paid, would be the first on-record confirmation of the arrangement Grande describes.