Justice Alexandre de Moraes of Brazil's Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF) said on Friday (11) that Justice André Mendonça, the rapporteur of the Master case, is conducting a "selective and directed lifting of secrecy" to give "ostensive protection to a certain political group". The accusation appears in a memo Moraes sent to the court's president, Luiz Edson Fachin.
According to G1, Moraes raised the stakes in a crisis that has set the two justices against each other since a partial release of documents on Thursday (10). "The selective and directed lifting of secrecy carried out by Minister André Mendonça, in the ostensive protection of a certain political group, repeats the illegal conduct of steering plea-bargain agreements and ordering investigative steps on the court's own initiative against predetermined targets," Moraes wrote.
How the crisis began
The clash started when Mendonça declassified the main investigations into Banco Master and former banker Daniel Vorcaro, the central figures of the case, but kept other fronts sealed. One of them is the financing of "Dark Horse", a biographical film about former president Jair Bolsonaro. That inquiry covers conversations between Vorcaro and Senator Flávio Bolsonaro. Earlier on Friday, Moraes asked for every seal to be lifted at once. The Prosecutor General's Office (PGR, Brazil's federal prosecutors) asked Fachin to make all documents public, and the STF president gave the rapporteur 24 hours to release them.
Mendonça denied any selective declassification. In his reply to Fachin, he said he had followed the court presidency's request and made public every proceeding tied to next Tuesday's (15) session. He also pushed back on Justice Cristiano Zanin's request for full access to Vorcaro's seized phone. The original device is in Federal Police custody, Mendonça said, and his office holds only a sealed, encrypted copy. Zanin insisted on the request, arguing that the media "must be shared with the other judges so that all have the same opportunity for analysis". In a separate memo, Moraes wrote that "it is not up to the reporting justice to choose which documents are accessible to the full bench for its judgment".
A broader release
Late on Friday, according to Folha de S.Paulo, Mendonça lifted the seal on the Dark Horse investigation and other Master case proceedings, making 31 documents public in all. He granted the PGR's request and wrote that the files "do not relate" to Tuesday's agenda, but that there is no impediment to declassifying them.
The court meets on Tuesday (15) to review a Federal Police report that logged 52 messages from Vorcaro to Moraes. The justices will decide whether to open an investigation against Moraes.