Justice André Mendonça of Brazil's Supreme Federal Court (STF) on Sunday (Sept 6) referred to the court's full bench the case of the messages exchanged between his colleague Alexandre de Moraes and Daniel Vorcaro, former owner of Banco Master. The next move belongs to the court's president, Chief Justice Edson Fachin.
According to g1, Fachin is expected to wait until Friday, Sept 11. That is the deadline he set for Moraes, Mendonça, Prosecutor General Paulo Gonet and Federal Police director-general Andrei Rodrigues to address the events that set off a crisis at the court. In a request filed Thursday (Sept 3), reported by Valor, Fachin asked, among other things, how Mendonça came to order the Federal Police report and whether police accessed private documents and sealed data while producing it.
Fachin's options
If he chooses the full bench, Fachin must still decide whether the session will be open or closed. The justices would then vote to open an investigation of Moraes or to shelve the case. G1 lists two other paths: a closed-door meeting like the one in February, when the court discussed another Federal Police report with messages between Justice Dias Toffoli and the former Banco Master owner (Toffoli gave up the rapporteurship of the case after that meeting, Valor recalls), or a decision by Fachin alone, described by sources heard by g1 as the least likely outcome. The indication is that he prefers a public session, to be confirmed after the consultations he has been holding with colleagues. The court's internal rules do not say how an investigation against a justice must be conducted; they state only that the full bench processes and judges such cases.
How the case reached the bench
Mendonça made the Federal Police report on Vorcaro's phone public on Tuesday (Sept 1), in case PET 16.662, opened after the force presented new information on the influence and monitoring network attributed to the banker in the Compliance Zero operation. The order did not name Moraes; the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo identified him as the recipient of the messages, as Poder360 reported. The report says Moraes received messages in which Vorcaro sought to interfere in and learn details of the inquiry that led to his first arrest, ordered in November last year. In one of them, the banker asked whether he should leave the country and requested protection from the Federal Police and the prosecutors. Two days before the arrest, on Nov 15, he wrote to the justice, according to Valor: "Can't we reverse this with Paulo or Andrei? This is a really dirty trick". The message referred to Gonet and Rodrigues. G1 also reports that messages from the same device suggest closeness between Vorcaro and Gonet, with lawyer Ciro Soares as the main intermediary.
The Prosecutor General's office (PGR, Brazil's federal prosecution service) said on Sept 1 that Mendonça's inquiry should be declared void. It argued that he had no basis to ask the Federal Police to analyze the recipient of Vorcaro's messages without a request from prosecutors or the police itself, and that only the full bench can decide on any investigation of a justice. Gonet also says Mendonça overstepped into the Federal Police's powers by trying to direct police actions, Valor reports. Mendonça defended sending the matter to the full bench in a "public and transparent" session, calling it the "sovereign instance to analyze" the material "in a technical and strictly legal manner". Moraes fired back on Thursday (Sept 3), asking Fachin to open an investigation of Mendonça for abuse of authority, crime of responsibility and administrative improbity.
Fachin has said the court will respond firmly, but at what he called the right moment. The case is now formally with the full bench, and the next step is his call by Friday: a public session, a closed meeting or a solo ruling.