Messages taken from the phone of banker Daniel Vorcaro and held by Brazil's Federal Police record a lunch on May 14, 2024, in New York, between lawyer Rodrigo Fux, son of Supreme Court Justice Luiz Fux, and the then owner of Banco Master. The finding was reported on Monday by the Painel column of Folha de S.Paulo, one of Brazil's leading newspapers. According to the paper, the meeting took place during Brazil Week, a business event held in the city.
Folha reports that the records show neither the subject of the conversation nor the restaurant. On the same date, Rodrigo Fux attended a whisky tasting sponsored by Vorcaro with about 40 guests. His name had already appeared on the guest list of the banker's box at Rio de Janeiro's Sambadrome during the 2025 Carnival. Reports in June by the newspaper O Globo and the news site Metrópoles placed the tasting at the Carnegie Club, near Central Park, put its cost at about US$ 1 million based on Federal Police data, and listed politicians such as Cláudio Castro, Hugo Motta and Ciro Nogueira among the guests.
Rodrigo Fux's office told Folha that the lawyer did not have lunch alone with Vorcaro and did not sit at the banker's table. It said his presence at the tasting was brief and that he had no contact with the former owner of Master. Justice Luiz Fux did not comment. No criminal charge arises from the lunch, and the records on their own point to no wrongdoing.
Timeline of the Master case
The Master case began as a Federal Police investigation into Banco Master and became an institutional crisis at the Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF), Brazil's top court, this year, after messages from Vorcaro's seized phone were linked to Justice Alexandre de Moraes. In recent days, the Federal Police delivered copies of the phone data to Justices Moraes, Zanin and Gilmar Mendes, and Justice André Mendonça lifted the secrecy over the bank's payment network. Vorcaro is a target of the inquiries; he says he cannot recall the recipient of a message the Federal Police attributes to Moraes.
Allies of Moraes have begun citing Rodrigo Fux's meetings to question Luiz Fux's role in Tuesday's session. According to the political news site Poder360, the sons of Fux and of Justice Nunes Marques had already been named in reports around Banco Master, with no evidence that family ties influenced votes at the court.
What comes next
The full bench meets on Tuesday to decide whether to open an investigation into Moraes over the Vorcaro case. Poder360 reports that the judgment will begin with an analysis of bias challenges. Vorcaro had been scheduled to testify to the Federal Police on Monday in the Master-BRB inquiry, but the hearing was moved to September 24 at the request of his defense, according to Brasil 247.