The magistrate of the Federal Supreme Court (STF) of Brazil Alexandre de Moraes would have maintained an exchange of messages with the former president of the already liquidated Banco Master, Daniel Vorcaro, investigated for alleged frauds and financial irregularities. According to a report from the Federal Police, the former banker would have asked him to intercede to stop the investigations into the entity and to guide him on how to circumvent the preventive detention order issued against him.
According to the Brazilian newspaper 'Estadão', which cites a document from the Federal Police, those messages were extracted from Vorcaro's mobile phone. Both communicated through one-time view content, sending screenshots of texts written in a notes application. Due to this system, investigators have only been able to access the images sent by Vorcaro, without managing to recover any potential responses from De Moraes.
The first request attributed to the former executive of Banco Master dates back to October 30, 2025, when he conveyed to the judge that it was "important to reinforce," before the director of the Federal Police, Andrei Rodrigues, and the attorney general of Brazil, Paulo Gonet, the instruction that "no one from below" should commit "any nonsense" with Banco Master, then about to announce a supposed sale to a consortium with investors from the United Arab Emirates.
By then, according to 'Estadão', Vorcaro had already signed a contract of 131 million Brazilian reais (almost 22 million euros) with the law firm of Moraes' wife, Viviane Barci.
The banker’s requests to the magistrate would have continued until just five hours before his arrest, on the night of November 17, at São Paulo International Airport. "If Andrei (Rodrigues) can delay it a week more, since it is a holiday, the bank will not go bankrupt. Try to call him and persuade him if you think it is possible," Vorcaro wrote to the Supreme judge.
Two days before being arrested, the former head of Banco Master even suggested to De Moraes: "Can't we reverse this with Paulo or Andrei? It's outrageous!".
Furthermore, according to messages released by the newspaper 'Folha', Vorcaro would have requested the Supreme judge to meet with him up to three times in the days leading up to his capture, even going so far as to set time and place in some of those contacts. "At 14:00, then. Should I stop by your house or mine?" reads one of the messages.
The Attorney General demands to invalidate the police report
After the publication of these exchanges, the Attorney General of Brazil, Paulo Gonet, has requested that the report of the Federal Police detailing the communication between Vorcaro and De Moraes be annulled. He argues that the judge of the Banco Master case, André Mendonça, also a member of the STF, "used the Police" to "impose the investigation" on his colleague, assigning him "activities that did not correspond to him".
"It is not the function of the judge to accuse, much less to carry out preliminary investigations," the prosecutor pointed out in the written document sent, cited by 'Folha'.
A minister of the Supreme can only be subject to investigation with the approval of the full court. In Gonet's opinion, the document prepared by the Federal Police at Mendonça's request constitutes in itself an investigation and, therefore, must be declared invalid.
"The order given to the police authority to investigate specific individuals, without a request from the Prosecutor's Office and without initiative from the police authority itself, is null and void, as it exceeds the limits of the magistrate's competence in the pre-trial phase," he argued.
The Attorney General adds that, even if during the investigations the Police had located conversations between De Moraes and Vorcaro and had formally requested to open an investigation, Judge Mendonça should have forwarded that request to the president of the Supreme, Edson Fachin, so that he could bring it to the full STF.
"By requesting that the elements of the investigation be examined, regardless of who the competent authority was, the reporting minister imposed the investigation on Minister Alexandre de Moraes, which ended up occurring in almost 190 of the 218 pages that make up the police report," Gonet reproached.
The conversations between Vorcaro and Moraes are included in the material intercepted on the former banker’s phone, which the Police had managed to recover but had not analyzed until Mendonça ordered the Federal Police to prepare, within 72 hours, a specific report on those messages and subsequently forwarded the document to the Attorney General for evaluation.
Mendonça demands that the full STF examine the case
At the same time, André Mendonça has requested to convene a plenary session of the STF to evaluate the messages pointing to contacts between his colleague De Moraes and Daniel Vorcaro. He claims that this is "the inevitable path" and that the plenary is the "sovereign body to analyze, in a technical and strictly legal manner," the evidence gathered by the Federal Police.
The rapporteur of the Master case argues that the plenary must pronounce itself independently of the position of the Attorney General and that the discussion "must take place publicly and transparently," in a face-to-face session, "since it could not be otherwise, due to the constitutional imperative and the undeniable consequence of the democratic and republican model."
The matter has shaken the Brazilian political landscape. The main opponent of the current president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, in his re-election attempt, the far-right Flávio Bolsonaro, has been forced to deny accusations of irregular financing linked precisely to his relationship with Vorcaro.
"There was no type of compensation for this investor during my term in the Senate. It was a sponsorship that did not involve any transfer," he assured last Friday, rejecting that his dealings with the banker, arising from the financing of the film 'Dark Horse' — centered on the figure of his father, the former president convicted for attempted coup Jair Bolsonaro — implied any benefit in his performance as a senator.
Mendonça's procedural offensive has shifted the focus, now placing De Moraes, seen by broad sectors as close to Lula, at the center.
In this line, a magistrate of the Supreme warned in statements to 'Folha' that "the STF, which was already in the electoral landscape facing some animosity from the population, now fully enters the hurricane." "He (Mendonça) has lit the match inside the fuel depot. He has opened the doors of the Supreme Court to hell, and no one knows what the consequences will be," he added, not ruling out a possible impeachment process against more than one member of the Court.
The same judge believes that if Flávio Bolsonaro were to win the elections, Mendonça would become one of the most influential figures in the country, concentrating the ability to influence the appointment of at least three future magistrates of the Supreme in the vacancies that would open in the next term.
Another member of the STF, also cited by the same newspaper, has described as "very questionable" both the methods used by Mendonça and the chosen timing and the leak of the case.
"Here we all carry out investigations, and the procedure and the form are always respected, something that he has not done in this case," he lamented, before emphasizing that it is "obvious" that the situation politically favors Flávio Bolsonaro.