Gilmar Mendes, the dean of Brazil's Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF), has asked the court's president, Luiz Edson Fachin, to requisition the Federal Police and have copies of the data extracted from former banker Daniel Vorcaro's phone sent directly to the justices' offices, if rapporteur André Mendonça does not release the files himself. According to InfoMoney and BBC News Brasil, the memo was filed on Saturday (12); G1 dates the filing to Friday (11). The standoff comes days before a full-court session set for Tuesday (15).
In the memo, Gilmar backs the requests filed by Justice Cristiano Zanin and argues that handing a copy of the media only to Mendonça's office upsets the court's internal balance. Unrestricted sharing, he wrote, would allow a more consistent deliberation, with each justice building a conviction on the full body of evidence rather than on "partial summaries".
"Such a measure is necessary to ensure that all Justices have knowledge of all the information relevant to the judgment, since the persistence of asymmetric access to the body of information undermines parity among the members of the Court and, ultimately, the collegiality that must preside over the judgment," Gilmar wrote.
The fallback request is explicit. "Should the data not be provided by the office of the eminent rapporteur, I reinforce the request filed by Zanin that the Federal Police be requisitioned, with urgency, through the Coordination of Inquiries in the Higher Courts, to provide the aforementioned copies," he wrote. The unit, known as CINQ/PF, handles federal investigations pending before the higher courts.
The standoff over the phone
The phone, an iPhone 17 Pro seized by the Federal Police, holds the messages between Vorcaro, the former owner of Banco Master jailed since November 2025 in an inquiry into fraud estimated at 12.2 billion reais, and Justice Alexandre de Moraes. Pressed by Zanin, Mendonça told Fachin that the original device is stored in Federal Police deposits to preserve the chain of custody, and that his office holds only an encrypted backup hard drive sent by the police in March 2026, untouched and sealed. The rapporteur said releasing the full contents could harm ongoing investigations and denied that the parity among the justices has been broken.
"This rapporteur also has no access to information that has not been duly formalized," Mendonça wrote, according to InfoMoney. Zanin countered that a sealed backup copy does not prevent sharing and noted that Vorcaro's own defense has already seen the material in full. Moraes backed the request, writing that "it is not up to the rapporteur to choose which documents are accessible to the bench".
Tuesday's session will examine the Federal Police report that identified the message exchanges, first reported by the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo and also obtained by Folha. According to Folha, the messages show Vorcaro asking Moraes for information about the Master investigation and at one point asking the justice whether he should flee the country. Folha also reports that Gilmar asked for the justices to receive copies of every document in the Banco Master investigation. Fachin has not yet ruled on the requests.