Justice Flávio Dino of Brazil's Supreme Federal Court (STF) has authorized the Federal Police (PF) to fully access material seized by São Paulo's civil police in the investigation into the production company behind Dark Horse, a biographical film about former president Jair Bolsonaro. The decision, reported Wednesday by journalist Andréia Sadi's blog on G1, releases not only reports already produced by the São Paulo state police but also documents, raw data extracted from seized media, and chain-of-custody records, the log of how evidence was collected, stored and analyzed. The measure grants a request made by the PF itself.
The investigation examines financing of the film, which reportedly received about 61 million reais (roughly $11 million) through the American fund Havengate Development, linked to Paulo Calixto, a lawyer for Eduardo Bolsonaro, one of the former president's sons. The PF is investigating whether part of those funds covered Eduardo's living expenses while he was based in the United States. Eduardo denies receiving money through that channel. The case became public after the outlet Intercept Brasil revealed conversations between Flávio Bolsonaro, another son of the former president and a leading 2026 presidential candidate, and Daniel Vorcaro, founder of the failed Banco Master, pointing to an arrangement worth roughly 134 million reais to finance the film. Flávio initially denied Banco Master had financed the production; he later acknowledged receiving 61 million reais from Vorcaro, saying the funds were used entirely for the film.
A private forensic audit commissioned by GoUp Entertainment, the film's production company, reviewed only the company's own spending and did not examine the origin of the Havengate funds. According to the report, cited by news outlet Poder360, total production spending came to $3.72 million in Brazil and $9.66 million in the United States between June 2025 and June 2026, classified in the document as private funds with no link to public money or Brazil's Rouanet cultural incentive law. Anisio Castelo Branco, the forensic expert who conducted the audit, told newspaper O Globo he was not authorized to audit the Havengate fund itself, and that tracing the origin of the money it transferred fell outside the scope of his work.
An institutional dispute over the probe
According to Sadi's column, PF investigators are privately weighing whether to ask that all threads of the film-financing investigation be consolidated at the Supreme Court, under Dino's oversight, a process known in Brazil as "federalization." Such a move could originate from a formal PF request or from the Office of the Prosecutor General (PGR); the column stresses federalization is not decided, only one of the paths investigators consider possible. The PF's request for raw data, not just material already curated by the civil police, suggests federal investigators want to examine original evidence and reach independent conclusions.
São Paulo governor Tarcísio de Freitas has publicly defended the state civil police's handling of the case, calling criticism that the investigation was being "held back" in São Paulo disrespectful. A day before Dino's ruling, Tarcísio said he would comply with the Supreme Court's order to share documents from the probe into an NGO linked to the film and denied any delay in the São Paulo-led investigation. The expanded federal access, in Sadi's reading, signals institutional distrust of how the state police has run the case, a dispute that has taken on political weight ahead of the 2026 election, in which Tarcísio is allied with Flávio Bolsonaro's campaign.
No date has been set for a decision on federalizing the investigation; for now it remains an internal discussion among investigators that may or may not advance through a formal request from the PF or the PGR. Justice André Mendonça also oversees a separate Supreme Court track tied to the film investigation, alongside probes into fraud at Brazil's social security agency (INSS) and a case involving Fábio Luís Lula da Silva, known as Lulinha, son of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. As of this report, neither the PF nor the PGR had formally requested federalizing the Dark Horse case.