Justice Cármen Lúcia of Brazil's Supreme Federal Court (STF), the country's top constitutional court, apologized to the Brazilian people during a plenary session on Tuesday, September 15. The extraordinary session had been called to examine the report on the relationship between former banker Daniel Vorcaro and Justice Alexandre de Moraes. According to news site G1, she said she was in a state of "deep consternation and sadness".
She spoke after Justice Flávio Dino requested a "vista", a procedural move that suspends a trial to give a justice more time. Cármen Lúcia opened by asking her colleague for license. "I do not have the habit of anticipating a vote when there is a request for a vista," she said. She then attributed the strain of recent days to the court itself, which she said "provoked civic unease among all Brazilian citizens in these last days". The newspaper Folha de S.Paulo reported it was her only remark of the session before the vote on the procedural question.
The justice said she had wanted to help calm the crisis among her colleagues and had failed.
"I apologize to the Brazilian people, who perhaps expected a different posture from me. But I think all of us here wanted the same thing, which was to try to resolve this, and the questions were not resolved and grew too large. So I apologize to the president of the Supreme Court and to all my colleagues, but above all to the Brazilian people, because I truly wanted to have been better and to have helped calm things down, and I could not"
A crisis born of the Master bank case
The crisis began in early September, when secrecy was lifted on Federal Police reports written during a probe into financial fraud at Banco Master. One document identified 52 messages exchanged between Vorcaro and Moraes from December 2023 to November 2025, the month the businessman was first arrested. The report also recorded in-person meetings between the two and a 130 million reais contract between the bank and the law firm of the justice's wife, Viviane Barci de Moraes.
On the procedural question raised by Gilmar Mendes, which dominated the session, the tally was 4 to 3 to keep separate the review of Moraes's conduct and the review of how Justice André Mendonça handled the Master case report. Court President Edson Fachin, the session's rapporteur, voted for separation, joined by Mendonça, Luiz Fux and Cármen Lúcia. Gilmar Mendes, Cristiano Zanin and Moraes himself argued for a joint trial. Dino, who had voted with that group, switched to the vista request, which suspended the judgment.
What comes next
Under the court's internal rules, set by a December 2022 decision, Dino has up to 90 days to return the case, counted from the publication of the session minutes, according to BBC News Brasil. If the deadline runs out without a return, the trial resumes automatically. The court has kept a session scheduled for September 23 to examine Moraes's accusations against Mendonça.