The president of Brazil's Supreme Federal Court (STF), Edson Fachin, called the full bench into session on Wednesday (9) for a hearing on Tuesday, September 15. The justices will decide the fate of the review that pointed to a supposed relationship between Justice Alexandre de Moraes and Daniel Vorcaro, the former controlling shareholder of Banco Master, a large Brazilian investment bank.
What the bench will decide
According to G1, the session must settle whether the Federal Police report is valid. It was produced at the request of Justice André Mendonça, who oversees the Banco Master case at the court. The justices will also weigh the nullity request filed by the Attorney General's Office (PGR, the federal prosecutors' office) and choose between opening an investigation into Moraes and closing the matter.
The PGR asked for the review to be voided on September 1. In its view, Mendonça should not have asked the Federal Police to examine who the banker was messaging without a request from prosecutors or from the police itself. The office, led by Attorney General Paulo Gonet, also argued that only the full bench can decide on any probe of a sitting justice. It did not say whether the conduct described amounts to evidence of a crime.
How the case reached the bench
The Federal Police report drew on WhatsApp conversations between Vorcaro and various contacts from March 2024 to August 2025. His phone was seized in Operation Compliance Zero, which investigates suspected financial fraud tied to Banco Master. The records sat in a chapter on "other meetings" between Vorcaro and Moraes. The document became public on September 1, after Mendonça lifted its seal.
Some justices have questioned how Mendonça commissioned the work. In their reading, as reported by G1, an inquiry into another member of the court could not start without the bench's authorization. BBC News Brasil reported that thirteen retired STF justices, the national bar association (OAB) and business leaders had pressed Fachin in recent days to convene the session.
"A picture thus emerges of conflicts and procedural overlaps that amount to a grave injury to public order and to the integrity of this court: successive rulings by individual justices, issued by members of this court in separate proceedings yet bound together by the same facts and officials," Fachin wrote.
The September 15 session will take up Petition 16.662, the proceeding in which Mendonça made the conversations public and suggested an investigation into his colleague. Fachin has taken the case out of Mendonça's chambers and will report on it himself. The vote will determine whether the Federal Police report stands, is voided on procedural grounds, or becomes the starting point of an investigation into Moraes.