President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who is running for reelection, attacked on Saturday (12) the handling of the Banco Master cases at Brazil's Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF), the country's top court. At a rally in central Curitiba, Lula targeted the justice who reports on the cases, André Mendonça, and said that "quem fez putaria vai ser desmascarado", a vulgar Portuguese phrase meaning roughly "whoever did filth will be unmasked".
Without naming the justice, the president described a conversation with the court's president, Edson Fachin.
"I was with Fachin and I told him that it was not possible for a citizen who is a reporting justice to keep releasing cherry-picked stories, only on what interested him. I asked for the whole case file to be released. To find out who is behind this. And we will bring everything into the light to see for real who is a thief and who is corrupt in this country. And the Bolsonaro family will not escape," Lula said, according to the news site G1.
He then spoke about Daniel Vorcaro, the former owner of Banco Master, jailed since November 2025 and under investigation for suspected fraud estimated at 12.2 billion reais, according to BBC News Brasil.
"Vorcaro is already in prison. But now the orgies he used to throw will start to come out. The women from Switzerland, from Sweden, to get up to shenanigans with a lot of people in politics. This will start to come out. So whoever did putaria will be unmasked," he said, according to the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo.
Lula also said the opposition turned a loan shark into a banker in 2019, in a reference to Vorcaro, according to G1. And he returned to a message he has repeated in recent days: judges should not use their posts for personal enrichment, again without naming anyone. "No one can be a justice of the supreme court to get rich. That is a priesthood. People must hold themselves to a standard of conduct above the average of society," he said. He repeated that his eldest son, Fábio Luís Lula da Silva, known as Lulinha, a target of three investigations at the court, will not be shielded. "He was born to do the right things and I believe in his innocence. But if he made a mistake, he will have to pay for the mistake he made."
In the same speech, Lula attacked former judge Sergio Moro, the PL candidate for governor of Paraná who convicted him in the Lava Jato corruption investigation in 2017. "Our opponent is very weak, a liar. I am a victim of his lies," he said. On stage with him were the Workers' Party (PT) Senate candidates Gleisi Hoffmann and Dr. Rosinha, and Requião Filho of the PDT, candidate for state governor. According to Folha, Lula had already called on Wednesday (9), in a social media post, for the full lifting of secrecy over the Master investigations involving all those under scrutiny.
The crisis at the Supreme Court
The court's crisis began on September 1, when Mendonça lifted the secrecy on a Federal Police report indicating that Vorcaro exchanged information with Justice Alexandre de Moraes. Days later, Moraes released Federal Police intelligence reports that point to suspected bias in Mendonça's conduct as the rapporteur. On Friday (11), in a formal letter to Fachin, Moraes accused his colleague of a "selective choice" in the release of case files: according to G1, he said the rapporteur had made only 15 case files available, in incomplete form, and omitted 180 documents. Moraes, Cristiano Zanin and Gilmar Mendes also demanded full access to the contents of Vorcaro's phone. Mendonça replied to Fachin that the device is stored at the Federal Police and that his office holds only a sealed backup copy.
The dispute now moves to the full bench. On Saturday, Fachin rejected a request to judge the cases against Moraes and Mendonça jointly and kept an extraordinary session scheduled for Tuesday (15), dedicated to the petition containing the messages between Moraes and Vorcaro. The review of the requests to investigate Mendonça was set for September 23. According to BBC News Brasil, the Prosecutor General's Office (PGR) has asked for Mendonça's procedure against Moraes to be declared null, and that question may also reach Tuesday's agenda.