An institute founded by Justice André Mendonça of Brazil's Supreme Federal Court (STF) signed 28 contracts with public bodies worth a combined 10.7 million reais in a little over two years of operation. The survey was published by BBC News Brasil on Thursday (Sept. 3). According to the report, every contract identified was signed through dispensa or inexigibilidade de licitação, two legal mechanisms that let public agencies hire without competitive bidding.
The survey drew on records from the National Public Procurement Portal, known as PNCP. The BBC notes that direct hiring is allowed under Brazilian law and does not by itself indicate wrongdoing. Clients included the state governments of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Piauí, municipal governments and professional councils such as the Federal Accounting Council. The deals covered training courses ranging from administrative management to public security.
Created after the court, left this week
The Instituto Iter was created in November 2023, nearly two years after Mendonça joined the court on the nomination of former president Jair Bolsonaro. He had earlier served as the federal government's chief attorney and as Bolsonaro's justice and public security minister. Documents seen by the BBC show the Mendonça family held a stake through another company, Integre Cursos e Pesquisa em Estado de Direito Governança Global, a shareholder in the institute. In 2024, when the Iter was registered in São Paulo, the justice's wife, Janey Nagliatti de Mendonça, was named its administrator. The report also cites Brazil's judiciary statute, which restricts the activities judges and court justices may perform.
On Thursday, Mendonça said in a statement that he had decided the day before to leave the partnership. He and his wife gave up their stakes with no financial compensation. In a statement to the BBC, the Instituto Iter confirmed the exit and denied that the justice ever received profits from the entity.
"We record that, throughout the two years of the Instituto Iter's activity, there was no distribution of profits or dividends."
The Vorcaro meeting
The institute also said the intellectual nature of its courses justified the exemptions from bidding. Attention to its contracts grew after Mendonça told the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo that he had met banker Daniel Vorcaro, owner of Banco Master, in early 2025 at the institute's headquarters in São Paulo. The meeting was first reported on Wednesday (Sept. 2) by journalist Paulo Motoryn in his Noites Húngaras newsletter. Mendonça now serves as the reporting justice in the case investigating alleged financial crimes by Vorcaro, though he did not hold the case at the time of the meeting. His office said the meeting, which included one of the banker's lawyers, covered a lawsuit at the STF over precatorios, court-ordered government debt payments, of interest to the bank. The newspaper O Globo reported that Vorcaro attempted to close a contract with the institute.
The BBC said it found no record so far that the institute benefited from contracts linked to Vorcaro's companies. The survey lands in the middle of a crisis between Mendonça and Justice Alexandre de Moraes. Mendonça lifted the secrecy on a report on alleged messages between Vorcaro and Moraes, including a 129 million reais contract sent by the banker's team to the justice's wife, Viviane Barci de Moraes. Moraes has not commented on the report so far. What comes next rests with the court: Mendonça has asked STF President Edson Fachin to refer a request to investigate Moraes to the full bench, a decision that remains pending.