Brazil's Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF) ended the first session of the Banco Master crisis on Tuesday (Sept. 15) with a provisional 4-3 vote to judge the cases of Justices Alexandre de Moraes and André Mendonça separately. Justice Flávio Dino then asked for a "vista," a procedural request that suspends a vote so a justice can study the case files, and the trial resumes next week.
The tally answered a procedural motion filed by Justice Gilmar Mendes, who argued the two cases should be examined together. Voting to keep them apart were the court's president and the session's rapporteur, Edson Fachin, joined by André Mendonça, Luiz Fux and Cármen Lúcia. Voting for a joint review were Gilmar Mendes, Cristiano Zanin and Alexandre de Moraes himself. Dino had signaled he would join that side, but switched to the review request instead.
According to Folha de S.Paulo, the result proclaimed by Fachin is temporary, and Dino's request can suspend the trial for up to 90 days. If his vote were counted in favor of a joint review, the tally would be tied at 4-4. In that scenario the court's internal rules would give extra weight to the president's vote, known as the casting vote; the newspaper reports there are still doubts inside the court about that reading, because Fachin is the case's rapporteur.
What was at stake
Tuesday's session focused on Moraes. A Federal Police report identified 52 messages exchanged between the justice and Daniel Vorcaro, former owner of Banco Master, between December 2023 and November 2025, along with in-person meetings and a 130 million reais contract between the bank and the law office of Moraes's wife, Viviane Barci de Moraes. According to G1, it was the first time in the court's history that the full bench discussed opening an investigation against one of its own sitting justices. The session on Mendonça, whom Moraes accuses of a "selective" release of case files, is scheduled for Sept. 23.
An open confrontation
The session was marked by open clashes. Moraes said that on May 18 Mendonça ordered the seizure of two files, named "Moraes.pdf" and "Toffoli.pdf," which he described as part of a dossier. Mendonça replied that he never treated the files' content as true and kept the case under seal to protect the investigation. When André Mendonça rose to answer Prosecutor General Paulo Gonet, Gilmar Mendes shouted at him: "The nerve of this man is astonishing!". Gonet, who denied any closeness with Vorcaro, defended the Federal Prosecutor's Office.
It was in that atmosphere that Dino cut the debate short. "I have to interrupt this situation because we have a point of order. We are not in a position to deliberate. The climate is only getting worse, and society is watching something different from the procedure the law mandates," the justice said.
Cármen Lúcia voted against joining the trials and spoke about the court's moment, with Brazil's national election less than three weeks away. "I find myself, like perhaps many of my colleagues, in a state of deep consternation and sadness," she said.
"I apologize to the Brazilian people, who perhaps expected a different stance from me. But I think all of us here wanted the same thing, which was to try to solve this, and the questions were not solved and grew far too large. So I am apologizing to the president of the Supreme Court and to all my colleagues, but above all to the Brazilian people, because I truly wanted to have done better and to have helped calm things down, and I could not."
According to G1, Dino asked Fachin to send the speech to the Foreign Ministry and to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, to head off new United States sanctions against Moraes. The trial resumes next week, with two questions still open: the final ruling on how the two cases will be handled, and the decision on whether to open an investigation against Moraes.