Brazil's Prosecutor General's Office (PGR) renewed its request on Saturday (Sept 12) that all justices of the Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF), the country's top court, be given full access to data extracted from the phone of former banker Daniel Vorcaro ahead of a trial scheduled for Tuesday (Sept 15). The filing went to the court's president, Justice Luiz Edson Fachin, and is signed by Prosecutor General Paulo Gonet.
In the document, Gonet repeats a position presented a day earlier and argues the justices should review the material before forming a judgment. The filing also carries the signatures of deputy attorneys general Antônio Edílio Magalhães Teixeira and André de Carvalho Ramos, and of vice prosecutor general Hindemburgo Chateaubriand Filho, who filed the first request for total access to the Master bank data, according to news site G1.
"Likewise, it seems relevant to us, above all and especially given the peculiarities of this case, that all justices have prior knowledge of the full set of data needed to form a judgment on the matter under debate," Gonet wrote.
The PGR joins three justices who called for full access on Friday: Cristiano Zanin, Alexandre de Moraes and Gilmar Mendes. The dispute comes days before a session in which the full court will review a Federal Police report on messages exchanged between Vorcaro and Moraes.
Pressure on the rapporteur
The rapporteur, Justice André Mendonça, told Fachin that the phone, an iPhone 17 Pro seized by the Federal Police, is held in the police's own storage to preserve the chain of custody. He said his office holds only a backup copy on an encrypted hard drive, sent by the police in March 2026, which remains intact and sealed.
Zanin rejected that explanation and argued the seal on the copy does not prevent sharing it with the other justices, since Vorcaro's own defense has already had access to the full material. Moraes reinforced the request. "It is not up to the rapporteur to choose which documents the court may access to reach its judgment," he said. Gilmar Mendes, the court's most senior justice, backed Zanin and asked Fachin to "urgently" request that the Federal Police send copies directly to the justices' offices if Mendonça does not release the files, saying "asymmetric" access undermines the court's collegiality, according to BBC News Brasil.
Tuesday's session
Vorcaro was arrested in November 2025 and is under investigation for suspected financial fraud estimated at 12.2 billion reais at Banco Master, according to the BBC. The crisis among the justices began with the release of Federal Police reports: on September 1, Mendonça lifted the seal on a document suggesting Vorcaro had sought advice from Moraes, and two days later Moraes released reports on the colleague's alleged irregular conduct. On Wednesday, Fachin removed Moraes as rapporteur of the so-called Fake News investigation and called Tuesday's plenary session. Until then, the court's president must decide whether to grant the PGR's request and order the full data sent to every justice's office.