Justice Flávio Dino of Brazil's Supreme Federal Court (STF) on Sunday (Sept. 13) lifted the confidentiality of documents sent by São Paulo state courts in the Dark Horse case and consolidated under his docket the investigations into an alleged scheme to divert public money through congressional budget earmarks, contracts tied to the São Paulo city government and people linked to federal lawmaker Mário Frias (PL-SP). In the ruling, Dino said there are signs the inquiries are connected, raised the hypothesis of a criminal organization devoted to capturing, circulating and hiding public funds, and logged a line of investigation into possible ties between the group and the PCC (Primeiro Comando da Capital), Brazil's largest criminal faction.
The unsealed material came from the São Paulo state court specialized in organized crime and money laundering, at the Barra Funda criminal courthouse. According to Folha de S.Paulo, Dino ordered São Paulo's state security department to hand the Federal Police all raw data extracted from the phones of the people and companies under investigation, along with computers and documents, to be held in PF custody with all legal safeguards.
A closed financial circuit
The ruling describes transfers between the lawmaker and organizations led by businesswoman Karina Ferreira da Gama, producer of the film. The technology firm Complexsys, hired by the Conhecer Brasil Institute (ICB), a beneficiary of earmark funds, received transfers from Frias and also sent money back to the institute. The firm additionally wired funds to the National Culture Academy (ANC), a nonprofit also presided over by Karina Gama. The Federal Police, as cited by the minister, reads the flows as evidence of coordinated action by a single core group.
"This circulation of funds between the lawmaker, the executing entity, the hired company and another beneficiary organization is not compatible with independent, economically justified business relations. On the contrary, it evidences a closed financial circuit, characteristic of structures designed to circulate, fragment and reintroduce funds among members of the same core," wrote Dino, in a passage translated from Portuguese.
The ruling also reproduces the PF's case that there may be a commingling of assets between the institute, its contractors and people tied to the group, citing crossed corporate ownership, declared revenue incompatible with the amounts moved and repeated refunds with no apparent economic justification. Investigators also say Frias wired sums to Go Up Entertainment, a company linked to Karina Gama, that exceed his declared income, which in the PF's view rules out the theory that the lawmaker merely authored earmarks later diverted by others and points to him as a possible active participant in the financial machinery. All of it remains under investigation.
How the case got here
Dark Horse, a film about former president Jair Bolsonaro, drew scrutiny after the news site The Intercept revealed in May audio recordings from November 2025 in which Senator Flávio Bolsonaro (PL-RJ), the PL presidential candidate, asks Banco Master owner Daniel Vorcaro for money to finish the production. The senator denied arranging any improper advantage and said the funds were entirely private. The 61 million reais Vorcaro sent to the film is being examined separately by Justice André Mendonça, who oversees the Banco Master case at the court, while Dino handles the earmark front. On Thursday (Sept. 10), the Federal Police served 49 search and seizure warrants authorized by the STF across São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Ceará and the Federal District in Operation Make Up, which targeted Frias and Karina Gama; Folha counted 29 people covered by the action. Investigators put the suspected diversion in the hundreds of millions of reais and list crimes including embezzlement, document fraud, money laundering, criminal organization and procurement offenses, with alleged irregularities running until July.
In a video posted on social media, his first statement after the searches, Frias called the operation a "smokescreen," denied wrongdoing, said he will cooperate and hand over every requested document and said he expects the case to be shelved. Flávio Bolsonaro's lawyers, in turn, asked the court at least four times to keep the whole case with Mendonça instead of Dino, without success. Karina Gama had not responded to interview requests from the state news agency Agência Brasil. No charges have been filed and everyone named is only under investigation. The next step set out in the ruling is the transfer of the São Paulo police material into Federal Police custody, after which the inquiries continue under Dino, with no date announced for their conclusion.