The president of Brazil's Supreme Federal Court (STF), Justice Edson Fachin, on Wednesday (9) suspended an inquiry opened by the Prosecutor General's Office (PGR, the federal prosecutors' office) to determine whether there was "order or external interference" in the making of a Federal Police report that recorded messages between Justice Alexandre de Moraes and former banker Daniel Vorcaro. According to CNN Brasil, the suspension was issued in a new case file opened by the court's presidency to centralize the review of facts involving Justices André Mendonça and Moraes and the Federal Police itself, and it stands "until further deliberation" by the court.

The inquiry had been opened on Friday (4) by Prosecutor General Paulo Gonet through a procedure of external control of police activity, the instrument Brazilian prosecutors use to oversee police work. Gonet ordered the Federal Police to explain how the report, requested by Mendonça, had been produced. In a message to Fachin, he said the PGR had not been informed in advance of Mendonça's order and could therefore not follow that stage of the investigation.

The suspension was part of a package of decisions Fachin issued to contain the crisis at the court. In the same ruling, he suspended Mendonça's decision removing Federal Police director-general Andrei Rodrigues and Justice Flávio Dino's order reinstating him, and will decide separately, in a proceeding of the court's presidency, whether the officer keeps the job, G1 reported. Fachin also took over the so-called Fake News inquiry, previously held by Moraes, suspended "any and all" investigative proceedings against members of the court, and called a plenary session for September 15. The Attorney General's Office, which had asked for the removal to be struck down, said the ruling "restores public and administrative order".

What each side alleges

Hours before Fachin stepped in, Dino had ordered Rodrigues and intelligence director Leandro Almada back to their posts, reversing their removal on Tuesday (8). In his ruling, Dino wrote that the alleged interference becomes "more serious" given reports that Mendonça met Vorcaro, who is jailed in the Banco Master fraud scheme, in a private meeting in March 2025 at the Iter Institute in São Paulo, an encounter absent from the justice's official calendar. "Can a party judge his own case and anticipate value judgments about Federal Police reports that mention him expressly?" Dino asked. He stressed he was making "no advance judgment" about the meeting, but called the situation "complex" and said it demands "moderation, balance and prudence", especially during the election campaign.

Mendonça says he met the then-banker "only once", at Vorcaro's initiative, and merely listened to him. According to the justice, the conversation dealt with a court case on precatório credits, a form of Brazilian public debt, of interest to Master, and his later rulings went against Vorcaro's position. In removing the Federal Police commanders, Mendonça cited "monitoring and targeted collection" against him and Solicitor General Jorge Messias. On the other side, Moraes argues, based on a Federal Police report he commissioned, that Mendonça may "in theory" have committed administrative improbity, crimes of responsibility and abuse of authority, with "favoritism toward certain political groups". None of the mutual accusations has led to criminal charges, and none of the justices is a defendant.

Timeline of the crisis

• September 1: Mendonça, the justice handling the Master case, lifts the secrecy on a Federal Police report that registers messages and meetings between Moraes and Vorcaro.
• September 3: Moraes asks for an investigation of Mendonça, accusing him "in theory" of abuse of authority and use of classified information.
• September 4: Gonet opens the PGR inquiry into interference in the making of the report.
• September 8: Mendonça preventively removes Andrei Rodrigues and Leandro Almada.
• September 9: Dino reinstates the two officers; hours later, Fachin suspends both Mendonça's and Dino's decisions and the PGR inquiry.

The next step belongs to the full court: the plenary session convened for Tuesday (15), when the justices are to discuss the Federal Police report that pointed to a supposed relationship between Moraes and Vorcaro. The suspension of the PGR inquiry stands until the court rules again, and Fachin still has to decide whether Andrei Rodrigues stays at the head of the Federal Police.