Hours after election loss, Flávio Bolsonaro ordered to surrender passports and banned from leaving Brazil

Far-right senator Flávio Bolsonaro has been banned from leaving Brazil and ordered to surrender his passports just hours after his loss in the presidential election to the leftist president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

The ruling was issued by Supreme Court justice Alexandre de Moraes, the same justice who oversaw the trial of the senator's father, former president Jair Bolsonaro, for attempting a coup.

The brief ruling refers only to a criminal case in which federal police are investigating Flávio Bolsonaro over his possible involvement in a money-laundering scheme.

The ruling also orders him to have no contact with his friend Willer Tomaz, a lawyer linked to betting companies that police suspect were being used to launder about £680m.

It cancelled all of Bolsonaro's passports, including the diplomatic one he holds as a congressman, and ordered him to hand them over within 24 hours.

Bolsonaro was the first to speak publicly about the matter, before Brazilian media were even aware of the judge's decision, in a video posted on social media.

In the video he said he had just left a visit to his father, who is under house arrest in Brasília, when 'Lula's federal police' were at his door and in the middle of the street, and he was served with an order to hand over his passports and told he is prohibited from leaving the country.

Bolsonaro said the decision was based on an interview his brother Eduardo Bolsonaro gave last Friday urging him to leave Brazil if he lost the election, but added, 'I never said that.' Eduardo is in self-imposed exile in the United States.

When his Senate term ends early next year, Flávio Bolsonaro will be out of public office for the first time in 24 years, and therefore without the special jurisdiction afforded to officeholders.

He is under investigation in another criminal case as well, over what happened to the £20m he was captured on tape asking a disgraced banker accused of corruption to provide for a biopic about his father.

Like Jair Bolsonaro four years ago, the senator has still not conceded defeat to Lula.

The Folha de S.Paulo newspaper reported that Flávio Bolsonaro had been persuaded to drop his plan to seek to annul the election, which he had announced after the result was declared on Sunday night.

Bolsonaro had claimed that the two-hour extension of voting, intended to allow voters who had been unable to access the mandatory free public transport to cast their ballots, had harmed the election, despite his own campaign also having argued for an extension. According to the newspaper, allies and lawyers told him his argument was legally weak.

He had still not publicly reversed his demand for an annulment, and in the same video he said he would file another case to have Lula's ticket disqualified over alleged abuse of economic power, a similar case to others his legal team brought during the campaign.