A Federal Police forensic audit has concluded that former directors of Banco de Brasília (BRB) engaged in what Brazilian law calls gestão fraudulenta, or fraudulent management, in the purchase of portfolios from Banco Master, in acquisitions totaling R$ 17.5 billion between 2024 and 2025. The report, prepared in August, was unsealed on the night of September 10 by Justice André Mendonça of the Supreme Federal Court (STF), who oversees the main investigations into the Master case. According to Estadão, Terra and G1, the audit concluded that frauds between the two banks added up to roughly R$ 17 billion and were built on the mass production of false documents and the use of a shell company.
The experts examined operations worth R$ 47.8 billion and centered their finding on 25 portfolio purchases approved by BRB's executive board, worth R$ 17.5 billion. Master, the bank owned by businessman Daniel Vorcaro, was later put into liquidation by Brazil's central bank. The experts ruled out explanations such as business failure, high risk-taking or isolated procedural lapses.
"The evidence therefore allows us to characterize, from a forensic-technical perspective, the practice of fraudulent management in the acquisition of Banco Master portfolios, materialized through the manipulation of governance sequences, the retrospective formalization of controls, the material circumvention of the approval-threshold regime, and the objective continuation of operations despite prudential alerts and concretely identified weaknesses," the report states.
What the audit found
According to the report, BRB had "relevant prudential, financial and reputational signals about Banco Master, formally incorporated into its informational environment, but did not demonstrate their consideration in the decision-making process." The experts identified 22 operations, worth R$ 7.63 billion, in which technical opinions were issued only after payments had been made. Of the 25 purchases, 21 came in exactly at the board's R$ 750 million ceiling, the amount that did not require approval by the board of directors, a practice the audit describes as splitting deals to avoid aggregate review. The bank also failed to show it had conducted structured due diligence on Master despite internal and external warnings about liquidity, capital and business-model risks. A working group created by BRB itself had already flagged weaknesses in collateral, documentation, lien registrations, financial transfers and the origination chain of the credits bought. By June 2025, Master accounted for 90.31% of BRB's exposure, which stood at R$ 19.78 billion that month.
The directors named
The audit documentarily linked six former members of BRB's executive board to the approvals. According to the report, they took part in decisions on continuing the operations, new acquisitions, the easing of risk alerts and the later completion of documents, and the decisions were approved unanimously. The finding is technical evidence within an ongoing investigation; those named retain the presumption of innocence. They are, with the positions they held:
- Paulo Henrique Bezerra Rodrigues Costa, president
- Cristiane Maria Lima Bukowitz, executive director of People Management
- Dario Oswaldo Garcia Junior, executive director of Finance and Controllership
- Luana de Andrade Ribeiro, executive director of Control and Risks
- Diogo Ilário de Araújo Oliveira, executive director of Wholesale and Government
- José Maria Correa Dias Junior, executive director of Technology
The bank's legal director at the time, Jacques Mauricio Ferreira Veloso de Melo, was not linked to the approvals because, according to the minutes examined, he had no voting rights or was absent from the deliberations.
In short, the case unfolded as follows: the purchases ran from 2024 to 2025, with concentration peaking in June 2025; Master was later put into liquidation by the central bank; the investigations moved to the STF under Mendonça; the audit was carried out in August to check information already gathered by the Federal Police and to review documents sent by BRB; and the report was unsealed on September 10.
In a statement, BRB said it was a victim of the crimes and that former directors should not be confused with the institution, without commenting on each of them. The defense of Vorcaro, who is jailed, did not comment on the report.
On Friday (September 12), STF President Edson Fachin took over the review of the alleged relationship between Justice Alexandre de Moraes and Vorcaro and ordered the Master and INSS investigation files sent to the court's presidency. The INSS is Brazil's social security institute, hit by a separate fraud inquiry. Both cases are now on hold until Fachin rules: he may take over the investigations himself or refer the question to the full court. No date is set. On Tuesday (September 15), the STF meets to discuss the validity of the Federal Police report on messages between Moraes and Vorcaro.