R$ 700,000, almost 30 years of wages for a Brazilian worker earning R$ 2,000 a month. A report by Coaf, Brazil's financial intelligence council, ties that amount to a transfer made by Isaac Sidney, president of Febraban, the federation that represents Brazil's largest banks, to a company linked to Daniel Vorcaro, owner of Banco Master, and to Fabiano Zettel, Vorcaro's brother-in-law. The story was reported exclusively by Folha de S.Paulo on Friday night (Sept. 11) and had not been confirmed by other outlets as of this writing.

According to the document, cited by the Folha, the money left Sidney's account on June 8, 2022 through a Ted, the electronic transfer system used between Brazilian banks. The transfer came one day after the account of the company Super Empreendimentos was opened at the Formiga branch, in the state of Minas Gerais, of the credit cooperative Sicoob Credifor.

Sidney's amount is a fraction of what the account took in that month: R$ 9.9 million in total, more than someone saving R$ 2,000 a month would gather over 400 years. Of that, R$ 9.2 million, about 13 times Sidney's transfer, came from Zettel, described by the Folha as the financial operator of the Master scheme, in five transfers by Ted and Pix, Brazil's instant payment system. Outflows in the same period reached R$ 9.8 million, mostly to real estate companies.

The context: Coaf (Conselho de Controle de Atividades Financeiras) is the federal body that receives reports from banks on operations with unusual values. Such reports flag movement outside normal patterns; they do not prove a crime and often feed investigations by the Federal Police and prosecutors.

Prior connection to Master

This is not the first time Sidney's name has come up in connection with the bank. In July, it became public that he took a R$ 5.5 million loan from Master in 2020, nearly eight times the transfer now flagged, to buy a duplex apartment. At the time, Sidney said documents proved the money went to the purchase and that the loan was repaid in December 2021, and he called the disclosure retaliation for his public criticism of Master and of Febraban's work.

Reached by the Folha on Friday, Sidney said the operation in the Super account was the purchase of credit rights, meaning rights to collect future payments that can be traded, through a "duly formalized assignment instrument" signed more than four years ago and recorded in his income tax return. He said the operation is private and regular and was fully paid with his own money of lawful origin.

The Master case

Banco Master is under investigation by Brazil's Federal Police. According to G1, which obtained a PF report, the bank used a company created with R$ 100 of capital to simulate R$ 7.155 billion in payroll loans that were later sold to Banco de Brasília (BRB).