Brazil's Prosecutor General's Office (PGR) told the president of the Supreme Federal Court (STF), Justice Edson Fachin, on Friday (4) that it has opened an external oversight procedure into the Federal Police's conduct in producing the report that pointed to a relationship between Justice Alexandre de Moraes, one of the court's 11 justices, and banker Daniel Vorcaro, jailed in Operation Compliance Zero. The communication was reported by G1. Prosecutor General Paulo Gonet is himself cited in the document.
"I inform Your Excellency that, under the order I am forwarding, I determined the opening of an External Control Procedure on Police Activity," Gonet wrote to Fachin, adding that the result will be reported to the court "in due time". External control of police work is a duty of Brazil's federal prosecutors, and the move follows a demand for explanations from the STF president. According to the PGR, the Federal Police will have to clarify, among other points, the "possible occurrence of an external order or interference" in the drafting of the report that may have "tainted its content".
The prosecutors' office also said it was never notified of the decision that ordered the investigation to be deepened, issued by the case's then-rapporteur, Justice André Mendonça. "The decision issued in Petition no. 15,556/DF was hidden from the Public Prosecutor's Office, which was thus prevented from carrying out the necessary external control of police activity, an essential step in any investigation," the PGR said, in a passage reported by G1. The case was reported by Mendonça and now sits with Fachin. Poder360 reports that the procedure aims to determine whether there were irregularities in the Banco Master investigations.
Timeline of the case
- March: the congressional inquiry into INSS benefit fraud (CPMI do INSS) found, in Vorcaro's phone records, a number linked to the STF that interacted with the banker, without identifying which official used it, according to BBC News Brasil. In a statement, the court denied that messages found in seized material had been sent to Moraes.
- September 1: Mendonça ordered the report's secrecy lifted. It was produced in Operation Compliance Zero, which investigates suspected fraud at Banco Master.
- Later on September 1: the PGR asked for the investigation that found the messages to be voided, arguing that deepening a probe into Moraes required authorization from the court's full bench.
- September 4: the PGR informed Fachin of the opening of external control proceedings over the Federal Police's conduct.
What the report says and what each side argues
According to BBC News Brasil, the document treats the exchanges as possible interactions between Vorcaro and a contact saved on the banker's phone under the justice's name. The messages reportedly dealt with payments under the R$ 131 million contract between Banco Master and the Barci de Moraes law office, run by Viviane Barci de Moraes, the justice's wife, and with matters of Compliance Zero itself. The Federal Police does not state that it confirmed with the phone carrier that the line was used by Moraes; only Vorcaro's phone was seized.
No formal accusation has been brought against Moraes. In March, the STF's communications office said, at the justice's request, that a technical analysis found that messages sent by Vorcaro "do not match the contacts of Justice Alexandre de Moraes in the seized files". The PGR, for its part, argues the investigation was flawed from the start. In a filing on September 1, reported by Agência Brasil, Gonet stated:
"The order given to the police authority to investigate specific individuals, without a request from the Public Prosecutor's Office and without initiative by the police authority, is void, as it exceeds the limits of the magistrate's competence in the pre-trial phase."
The next step is the conclusion of the external oversight procedure, with no set deadline. Its result will be reported to the STF, and the case remains with Fachin, who ordered the information that prompted the PGR's response.