The office of Justice André Mendonça of Brazil's Supreme Federal Court (STF) confirmed on Wednesday (2) that banker Daniel Vorcaro gave urgent testimony last week to an auxiliary judge who follows the Banco Master inquiry. Vorcaro, who is under investigation in the case, was heard without the Federal Police present and at the request of his own lawyers. The newspaper O Globo first reported the deposition, and the justice's office later detailed it in a statement.
"The testimony was given at the express request of the deponent's defense, which reported that he was suffering serious intimidation and asked to be heard urgently. It was a regular procedural act, conducted by an auxiliary judge," the office said.
On the absence of the Federal Police, the office said a prosecutor was present, as the law requires for hearings of this kind, and that the police team running the investigation was kept away in line with rules of the National Council of Justice (CNJ), the body that oversees Brazil's courts. "CNJ rules establish, as a guarantee of the deponent's physical and psychological integrity, the removal of the police team responsible for the investigation from acts in which he is heard," the statement said. Because the deposition was prompted by a "report of serious intimidation," the office argued that not summoning officers followed a rule meant to protect the deponent.
The content of the testimony remains sealed. Mendonça's team said, however, that the relationship between Vorcaro and Justice Alexandre de Moraes was not mentioned. Earlier on Wednesday, the office also said Mendonça met Vorcaro only once, in March 2025, to discuss a case on precatórios, Brazil's court-ordered federal debt payments, months before he became the rapporteur of the Master case in February 2026.
The case so far
Vorcaro is the former controller of Banco Master, the target of an inquiry into fraud the Federal Police estimates at around 12 billion reais. He was first arrested on November 17, 2025, at Guarulhos airport, in São Paulo. On Tuesday (1), the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo published messages taken from Vorcaro's phone and exchanged with a contact saved under the name of Alexandre de Moraes. According to the police, the exchanges include demands about payments under a 131-million-real contract between the bank and the law firm of the justice's wife, records of meetings between the two men, which the police counts at eight, and messages in which Vorcaro asked about his own arrest two days before it happened.
On Tuesday night, Prosecutor General Paulo Gonet asked the Supreme Court to void the inquiry Mendonça opened into the messages, whose secrecy Mendonça himself had lifted. The Prosecutor General's Office (PGR) argues the investigation exceeded what a judge may do in the pre-trial phase.
Court President Edson Fachin said in an official note on Wednesday that he would examine the facts and announce "the appropriate and necessary measures" in the coming days. Criminal lawyers heard by BBC News Brasil expect the full court to rule both on the request to void Mendonça's actions and on a possible investigation of Moraes, in a session Fachin must schedule.