Brazil's Prosecutor General Paulo Gonet has told the president of the Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF), Justice Edson Fachin, that he will examine whether external interference shaped a Federal Police report that pointed to messages and contacts between Justice Alexandre de Moraes and Daniel Vorcaro, the former Banco Master president jailed in the Compliance Zero operation. According to O Globo, the filing amounts to a request for authorization to investigate Justice André Mendonça, who ordered the report. Folha de S.Paulo and G1 reported the move on Friday night (Sept. 4).
In his message to Fachin, Gonet wrote that he "determined the opening of a Police Activity External Control Procedure", the instrument federal prosecutors in Brazil use to oversee police work, and said the outcome "will be reported to the Court at the appropriate time". According to G1, the Federal Police must clarify any "possible occurrence of an order or external interference" in the report's drafting that "tainted its content".
The prosecution says it was shut out of the proceedings that produced the report: "the ruling issued in Petition no. 15,556/DF was concealed from the Prosecution Office, which was thus prevented from carrying out the necessary external control of police activity, an essential stage of any investigation", the PGR said. Gonet's filing does not name Mendonça, but Folha reports that it refers to the justice's conduct. Gonet himself is cited in the police report, and the superior council of the federal prosecution service has opened a review of his own conduct, Folha reports.
How the case got here
The report came out of the inquiry into Banco Master. On Tuesday (Sept. 1), Mendonça, then the case's reporting justice, lifted the secrecy of the document, which compiles messages from Vorcaro's seized phone and indicates meetings between him and a contact attributed to Moraes from March 2024 to August 2025, at private homes in Brasília, in the Campos do Jordão region of São Paulo state and at events including the London Legal Forum, sponsored by the bank. Mendonça suggested the full bench weigh the material and asked the prosecution for a formal opinion. The same day, Gonet declared the investigation null because, in his view, it ran without a request from prosecutors or the police itself.
"It is not for a judge to accuse, still less for a judge to run pre-trial investigations. He may not use the judicial police as his longa manus for activities that were not assigned to him."
The words come from the opinion in which Gonet asked for the report to be voided, quoted by Folha. The document also suggests, according to G1, that Moraes discussed with Vorcaro the possibility of a Federal Police operation targeting the banker. Moraes denies the ties: in March, the court's press office said, at his office's request, that a technical analysis found Vorcaro's messages "do not match the contacts of Justice Alexandre de Moraes in the seized files". BBC News Brasil, which examined the phone number at the center of the report, notes that the police never said it confirmed with the carrier that the line was used by the justice. Moraes has separately asked Fachin to investigate Mendonça for abuse of authority, Folha reported. None of the people cited has been charged or convicted, and all inquiries remain preliminary.
What comes next
The case, once handled by Mendonça, now sits with Fachin, who ordered the prosecution to provide information. The Federal Police will be summoned to explain how the report was produced, and the findings will reach the court "at the appropriate time", with no set date. Formally investigating an STF justice requires the court's own approval: according to Folha, the path runs through the court president and depends on the bench agreeing, or not, to the probe. Fachin's decision on the authorization is the next step.