The governor of Bahia, Jerônimo Rodrigues of the Workers' Party (PT), used a helicopter during a campaign event that Brazil's Federal Police links to businessman Augusto Lima, a former partner of Daniel Vorcaro, the former owner of Banco Master. The column Painel of the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo reported the case on Sunday (20). According to the paper, the aircraft is the same one Lima had made available to Senator Jaques Wagner (PT-BA), the government's leader in the Senate.
The Bahia link in the Master scandal
Lima, who is from Salvador, founded Credcesta in 2018, a payroll lending business that reached 24 of Brazil's states and 176 municipalities. Federal police arrested him in November 2025 in Operation Compliance Zero, which investigates fraud in credit portfolios Banco Master sold to BRB, the bank controlled by the Federal District government, and he is under house arrest with an electronic ankle monitor, according to a Folha reconstruction republished by the outlet Farol da Bahia. Vorcaro, the bank's former owner, remains a target of the Federal Police inquiry whose confidentiality was lifted by Supreme Court Justice André Mendonça.
In the inquiry, the Federal Police says Lima put aircraft at the disposal of Wagner and the senator's family on more than one occasion. In October 2023, the businessman arranged a meeting with Wagner on an island he owns in Salvador and sent the aircraft's registration and the flight time, investigators say.
"On that occasion, Augusto Lima places a private aircraft at the disposal of Jaques Wagner and members of his family for travel between Salvador and the island indicated."
The Federal Police lists other benefits it is investigating as bribes: box tickets worth 63,339 reais for members of Wagner's family at a concert in Los Angeles in June 2023, bought by Reag Investimentos, an asset manager linked to João Carlos Mansur that was later raided in Operation Carbono Oculto and liquidated by the central bank; the purchase of an apartment worth 2.5 million reais; and 3.5 million reais paid to a company owned by the senator's daughter-in-law. Reached by Folha, Wagner said he met Lima in an institutional setting, that they became friends, and that the sale of the state-owned Ebal supermarket company, privatized for 15 million reais in 2018 when he was Bahia's economic development secretary, was a good deal for the state.
Aircraft as currency
The Bahia episode fits a pattern the Federal Police describes in the Master case: aircraft treated as a form of payment. According to G1, the police report says contracts of about 131 million reais with Banco Master and 50 million reais with Vorcaro's Viking Participações, both signed by the law office of lawyer Viviane Barci, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, could be settled by transferring shares in an Embraer Legacy 650 jet and an Airbus EC 155 B1 helicopter, aircraft tied to Prime Aviation, an air taxi company in which Vorcaro was a partner.
The Federal Police is examining whether the benefits Wagner allegedly received relate to his Senate work on matters of interest to Banco Master. Lima's lawyers denied wrongdoing and called the police operations unnecessary, saying he had been available to the authorities for six months. The Folha report lands weeks before Brazil's October general elections, with Rodrigues campaigning for re-election in the country's largest northeastern state.