An account of the Igreja Batista da Lagoinha, a Baptist congregation in the Belvedere district of Belo Horizonte, moved R$ 57.1 million between December 24, 2024 and December 8, 2025 in transactions that Brazil's financial intelligence unit, the Coaf, classified as unusual. The report was sent to the Federal Police in February and became public only on Thursday night (10), when the Supreme Federal Court lifted the secrecy on the files of the so-called Master case, the sprawling investigation into former Banco Master owner Daniel Vorcaro. The congregation was run by Fabiano Zettel, Vorcaro's brother-in-law, whom investigators describe as a financial operator for his group. Vorcaro and Zettel are jailed and listed as suspects; neither has been convicted.

According to Folha de S.Paulo, which reviewed the document, the account at state-owned Banco do Brasil recorded R$ 28,493,311 in credits and R$ 28,617,002 in debits in the period, for a total of R$ 57,110,313. That is about 60 times the church's presumed annual revenue, estimated at R$ 950,000. The Coaf wrote that the transactions, "by their regularity, value and form," could amount to a "device to circumvent the identification of the origin, destination, responsible parties or final recipients" of the money.

Broadcaster Band reported further details from the document. Zettel is listed as the church's proxy and legal representative and as the sender of 26 transfers that add up to R$ 19.2 million. The report says the money received was passed on mainly to construction companies, including payments of R$ 86,200 to AFEB Estruturas Metálicas and R$ 62,600 to BPO Gestão de Disponível. In all, the document names 823 people and companies in Zettel's orbit: 303 individuals and 520 firms.

The report also describes luxury spending. Moriah Asset, a company tied to Zettel, bought a Range Rover for R$ 1.53 million in April 2025, with a down payment of R$ 1.23 million whose origin could not be identified, and in December 2025 purchased a Cadillac Escalade for R$ 1.6 million and an Audi RS6 for R$ 650,000. In real estate deals by Super Empreendimentos, another company Zettel represents, one property changed hands for R$ 48 million against a reference value of R$ 6.99 million, and another for R$ 16.99 million against a reference of R$ 3.74 million. Both deals involved advance payments, of R$ 5 million and R$ 11 million, with no record of how the money moved.

How the case got here

• December 2024 to December 2025: the period of the transactions flagged by the Coaf in the church account.
• February 2026: the Coaf sends its report to the Federal Police, which is investigating Vorcaro and his circle in Operation Compliance Zero.
• March 2026: Zettel is arrested, according to ICL Notícias, and the Belvedere congregation is shut down.
• Thursday (10): Justice André Mendonça, the case's rapporteur, lifts the secrecy on Petição 15.556, described as the main inquiry, at the request of Chief Justice Edson Fachin.
• Friday (11): the reports reach the media, and Vorcaro's lawyers ask the court to filter what remains sealed.

Lagoinha Global, the church network led by pastor André Valadão, said local congregations have their own leadership and financial autonomy. In a statement, it said it had been told at the time that the money would pay for renovations, and that the funds were described as amounts raised by Zettel for the works, not as tithes or offerings.

"The amounts involved in the transactions now disclosed, however, were not known to the institution, and their scale only became known through the investigations."

What comes next

Vorcaro's defense argues that releasing the files wholesale could expose personal material, such as images of family members and messages exchanged with his lawyers, and asked the rapporteur for "extreme prudence" in any further disclosure. The next date on the calendar is Tuesday (15), when the full bench of the Supreme Court meets to weigh the validity of a Federal Police report on Justice Alexandre de Moraes, the session that led to the files being opened. The reports consulted record no public response from Zettel's defense.