Brazil's Federal Police carried out 49 search and seizure warrants on Thursday (Sept. 10) against federal lawmaker Mario Frias and Karina Gama, producer of the film Dark Horse, in an operation authorized by Justice Flávio Dino of the Supreme Federal Court (STF), Brazil's top court. The raids came the morning after the court's president, Edson Fachin, suspended decisions by Dino and Justice André Mendonça and stripped Alexandre de Moraes of the fake news inquiry, opened in 2019 to investigate attacks on the court and its members, in an attempt to calm the feud between the justices. In the assessment of Folha de S.Paulo, Dino's offensive buried that truce, and the conflict inside the court "is no longer distinguishable from the electoral race" between Lula (Workers' Party) and Senator Flávio Bolsonaro (PL).
According to Agência Brasil, Operation Make Up investigates the suspected diversion of public funds through congressional earmarks routed to private companies, and Dino handles the case at the STF. Warrants were served in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Ceará and the Federal District, including two entities owned by Gama, the Instituto Conhecer Brasil and the Academia Nacional de Cultura. Frias wrote and executive-produced Dark Horse, a film about former president Jair Bolsonaro. Police are investigating embezzlement, document fraud, money laundering, criminal organization and procurement crimes, with authorities estimating diversions in the hundreds of millions of reais.
A truce that lasted a day
Fachin acted on Wednesday (9), one day after Mendonça ordered the preventive removal of Federal Police director-general Andrei Rodrigues and hours after Dino ordered his reinstatement. The court president suspended both decisions at the request of the Attorney General's Office (AGU) and also suspended petition 16.662, the case in which Mendonça made public conversations between Moraes and former banker Daniel Vorcaro. Fachin wrote that the STF presidency has a duty to "preserve the integrity of the court" and described a state of "conflicts and procedural overlaps". He also ordered the fake news inquiry files sent to the Federal Police and then to the Prosecutor General's Office, which will decide between closing the case or filing charges. The AGU said the ruling "restores public and administrative order".
The crisis grew out of the Banco Master investigation. On Sept. 1, Mendonça, the case's rapporteur at the STF, lifted the seal on a Federal Police report containing conversations between Moraes and Vorcaro. Two days later, Moraes asked for an investigation of his colleague, saying Mendonça had, "in theory", committed administrative improbity, crimes of responsibility and abuse of authority, with "favoritism toward certain political groups".
From the bench to the campaign
Folha columnist Igor Gielow writes that the court's calendar and the campaign calendar have merged. The paper notes that Flávio Bolsonaro, a presidential candidate, politicized the case and attacked the alliance between Lula and Moraes, while leaving out his group's ties to Mendonça, appointed to the court by Jair Bolsonaro, and the fact that he is himself a target of suspicion in the Master case. In May, the outlet The Intercept revealed that the senator had asked Vorcaro for money to finance the shooting of Dark Horse; Flávio denied any wrongdoing and said the funding was entirely private. The case examining the transfer of 61 million reais from Vorcaro to the film, at the senator's request, runs separately under Mendonça. Folha notes that none of the senator's arguments on the matter has held up so far: he has never presented an accounting of the support he claims to have given the film, and public money was involved in the project.
Lula, running for reelection, weighed in on Wednesday, posting that it is "urgent" to lift "the complete secrecy of the investigations into everyone involved in the Master case, whoever it may be, no matter who it hurts", according to BBC News Brasil. Moraes called a press statement for Thursday and canceled it shortly after; his office said only that it would be "rescheduled at an opportune time", according to G1. The next step belongs to the full court: Fachin has called a plenary session for Tuesday (Sept. 15), when the justices are to discuss the aftermath of the Police report and set the course of the investigation into Moraes and Vorcaro.