Brazil's Federal Police said on Monday (Sept 14) that it had delivered copies of the data extracted from the seized cellphone of former banker Daniel Vorcaro to the chambers of three justices of the Supreme Federal Court (STF), Brazil's top court: Alexandre de Moraes, Cristiano Zanin and Gilmar Mendes. In a statement, the force said the copies "are identical to the extraction performed on the device", an iPhone 17 Pro collected during operations of the Master Bank case, and that the original material remains entirely in its facilities, inside a "formally documented chain of custody", with intact seals and digital integrity verification mechanisms.
The handover answers formal requests filed in recent days by the three justices with the court's president, Edson Fachin, and comes on the eve of a plenary session scheduled for Tuesday (Sept 15) to address the crisis among the justices' chambers. The full bench is set to review a Federal Police report that pointed to messages exchanged between Vorcaro and Moraes, and to decide whether to open an investigation into the justice's conduct. Moraes is currently neither a defendant nor a formal suspect.
The standoff between the chambers
Zanin argued that the bench needs the full context of the data to deliberate, noting that Vorcaro's own defense team had already been given access to the complete content. Moraes backed the request, writing to Fachin that "it is not up to the rapporteur justice to choose which documents are accessible to the Collegiate to carry out its judgment". Gilmar Mendes, the court's most senior member, said keeping the archive only in the office of the rapporteur, André Mendonça, undermines the court's internal balance and parity, and pledged that the material will stay under a "strict restriction regime", with access limited to his own chamber.
Mendonça, the rapporteur of the Master case, said in a Sunday ruling that all the material needed for the judgment is already fully available to the justices, and that releasing the remainder "would only contribute to disrupting the judgment" while putting at risk "the entire continuation and success of the investigations". He said that in March he received only a backup copy on an encrypted hard drive, kept sealed as a counter-proof and never handled. The Federal Police told Fachin, however, that this copy does not match the original material, which "never left the institution's custody".
From Vorcaro's arrest to Tuesday's session
Vorcaro, former controller of Banco Master, was arrested in November 2025 and is under investigation for suspected financial fraud estimated at 12.2 billion reais. The STF crisis surfaced on September 1, when Mendonça lifted the secrecy on a Federal Police report suggesting Vorcaro had sought advice and exchanged information with Moraes. Two days later, Moraes removed the secrecy from police intelligence reports on alleged irregular conduct by Mendonça. On September 9, Fachin took the Fake News inquiry away from Moraes and scheduled Tuesday's session; on Thursday (Sept 10) he ordered the end of secrecy over records tied to the bank. Mendonça then released part of the documents, prompting Moraes to accuse him, in an official letter, of a "selective choice".
The next step is the extraordinary plenary session on Tuesday (Sept 15), starting at 10 a.m. Brasília time, according to news outlet G1. Beyond the review of the report, Emílio Peluso, a constitutional law professor at the Federal University of Minas Gerais quoted by BBC News Brasil, expects the session may be broadened to other episodes in the justices' dispute. Vorcaro remains an investigation target, with no conviction, and none of the claims involving the justices has so far led to formal charges.