Brazil's top federal prosecutor asked on Tuesday (September 1) for the country's Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF) to nullify an investigation ordered by Justice André Mendonça into the ties between fellow Justice Alexandre de Moraes and Daniel Vorcaro, the former owner of Banco Master. In his filing, Prosecutor-General Paulo Gonet argues that the order Mendonça issued to open the inquiry exceeded what a judge may do before formal charges exist.
The inquiry rests on messages that the Federal Police extracted from Vorcaro's phone, including exchanges with an interlocutor identified as Moraes. According to G1, one exchange suggests the justice discussed with the former banker the possibility of a Federal Police operation that would target Vorcaro. The material is part of a police report sent to the STF, whose secrecy Mendonça lifted that same Tuesday. The day before, he had given the Prosecutor-General's Office (PGR) five days to review the report and weigh in on opening an investigation into his colleague. Folha de S.Paulo reports that Gonet himself is mentioned in the report.
"An order given to the police authority to investigate specific individuals, without a request from prosecutors and without the police having acted on its own, is void, because it exceeds the limits of a judge's authority in the pre-trial phase"
Gonet also wrote that "it is not for a judge to prosecute, much less to carry out pre-trial investigations". His filing adds a second ground for nullity under Brazil's judicial organization law, the Loman: when evidence of a crime by a judge surfaces, the material must be sent to the body empowered to try that judge, and for an STF justice that body is the full Court. "Paradigmatic decisions of the Supreme Federal Tribunal leave no doubt that a judge taking on functions that are not his is a cause of nullity," the document says.
How the case got here
Vorcaro was first arrested on November 17, 2025 at Guarulhos airport, near São Paulo, as he tried to board a private jet bound ultimately for Dubai. The next day the Central Bank placed the Master group into extrajudicial liquidation, citing severe financial deterioration and insolvency risk. Released by a federal appeals court, he was preventively re-arrested on March 4, 2026 on Mendonça's order, after the analysis of phones seized in the first arrest suggested a risk of evidence destruction. He is under investigation for fraudulent management, money laundering and criminal organization, and has not been convicted.
Beyond the conversation about a possible police operation, the released documents cover a contract of about R$ 131 million between Master and the law office of Viviane Barci de Moraes, the justice's wife, and a second proposal worth R$ 50 million to be paid with shares of a private jet and a helicopter, Folha reports. The material also records Vorcaro's requests that Federal Police director-general Andrei Rodrigues and Gonet himself be engaged.
What each side says
In the decision lifting the secrecy, Mendonça said the matter must go to the full Court, "the sovereign instance to examine, in a technical and strictly legal manner, the new elements brought by the police". The Barci de Moraes law office said in a statement that it consulted the justice about possible legal bars before signing the contract, because he is married to a partner in the firm, and that Alexandre de Moraes "never judged any case involving Banco Master". Moraes has not been charged, and everyone named in the report is presumed innocent.
The next move belongs to Mendonça, who must decide whether to accept the nullity request or keep the inquiry alive. Should the case proceed, he wrote that the deliberation must take place in an in-person session of the full Court, "on a date to be set" by STF President Edson Fachin. BBC News Brasil reports that the session is expected to be scheduled after the PGR's filing, which came on Tuesday. No date has been set so far.