The phone number Brazil's Federal Police attributes to Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes in its report on his exchanges with banker Daniel Vorcaro is the same number a joint congressional inquiry into the INSS, Brazil's social security agency, identified in March. The finding was published by BBC News Brasil on Friday.
In an independent check, the BBC queried OSINT Industries, a platform that cross-references public data, and the number came up associated with digital accounts bearing Moraes's name and with profiles apparently linked to his wife, Viviane Barci de Moraes, and to one of the couple's daughters. On Vorcaro's phone, the contact was saved as "Alexandre de Moraes BRASILIA", "STF TSE NOVO" and "Eu STF". According to the police, the contacts were shared with the banker by former minister Fábio Faria, who served in the government of Jair Bolsonaro, in a WhatsApp conversation in December 2023.
The report was made public on Tuesday by decision of Justice André Mendonça. The document does not say the police confirmed with the phone carrier that the justice used the line. Only Vorcaro's phone was seized, and the investigation recovered only the messages he sent. The exchanges show the banker pressing for special attention to payments under the 131 million reais contract between Banco Master and the Barci de Moraes law office, run by Viviane. The document also indicates Vorcaro discussed with that contact information about Operation Compliance Zero, which investigates suspected billion-real fraud at the bank, and measures that could affect his pretrial detention.
The congressional trail
The inquiry, a mixed committee of both houses of Congress known as CPMI, reached the number while investigating fraud in pension payments. Banco Master operated in payroll loans to social security beneficiaries, and lawmakers broke Vorcaro's telephone records secrecy. Among his data were records bearing Moraes's name. On March 19, the senator who chaired the committee, Carlos Viana (PSD-MG), announced the response obtained through Sittel, the federal telephone records system: "In a formal response obtained via Sittel, it was informed that this number is linked to the Supreme Federal Tribunal."
The court had spoken earlier that month. On March 6, at the request of Moraes's office, the court's communications secretariat published a note saying a technical analysis found that messages sent by Vorcaro "do not match the contacts of Justice Alexandre de Moraes in the seized files". According to the news site SBT News, which had access to the Sittel document, the line was activated on February 22, 2017, the day the Senate confirmed Moraes's nomination to the court.
Viana is now demanding a new explanation from the court about who owns the line. "Now, with the new information revealed by the Federal Police and the independent checks reported by BBC News Brasil, this question has become even more important," he said in a statement to the BBC. Separately, the Attorney General's Office told court President Edson Fachin it has opened an external control procedure into the Federal Police's conduct in producing the report. Mendonça has already suggested the material be reviewed by the court's full bench.