The banker Daniel Vorcaro, of Banco Master, stated in a proposed plea bargain, the cooperation agreement of Brazilian criminal procedure, that ACM Neto, a former mayor of Salvador and current vice president of União Brasil, and Antônio Rueda, the party's national president, received 10% of the deposits that public pension funds and state-owned companies made with the bank. UOL reported the document's contents on Thursday (10 September), in a column by journalists Cézar Feitoza, Fabio Serapião and Natália Portinari. Brazil's Federal Police and the federal Attorney General's Office (PGR) had already rejected Vorcaro's plea proposals, and no court has ratified the claims.

Under the rule as the document describes it, "each political group that captured the investment" would be entitled to 10% of the amount placed, or 1% a year for as long as the money stayed with Master. Vorcaro says the two politicians' work helped the bank raise about R$ 2 billion, which would imply a liability of up to R$ 200 million to the pair. The document does not say how much was actually paid, and Vorcaro does not explain how the calculation method was defined. The institutions named are the pension funds of Rio de Janeiro, Amapá and Amazonas states, plus Cedae, Rio's water and sewage utility.

How the case got here

• The lifting of banking secrecy on Master identified R$ 6.4 million paid to offices linked to Rueda between 2022 and 2025, and R$ 5.4 million to ACM Neto's consultancy between 2023 and 2025.
• Vorcaro submitted plea bargain proposals; the Federal Police and the PGR rejected them, citing a lack of new information and the absence of guarantees that he would return money tied to the alleged frauds.
• Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes released a Federal Police intelligence report on the investigation, and the document began circulating again, according to Bahia Notícias.
• On Thursday (10), UOL published the excerpts naming ACM Neto and Rueda.

What the informant describes

In the proposal, Vorcaro says payments to the two men were so frequent that the bank began tracking the amounts they were owed. One passage reads:

"Because ACM Neto and Antônio de Rueda brokered several deals for Banco Master, such as Credcesta, fundraising from institutional investors and intermediation with BRB, always in exchange for improper payments, both came to hold a kind of managerial current account of receivables with Banco Master."

Payments to ACM Neto would have come in cash, through companies and people tied to Augusto Lima and to Antônio Freixo, owner of Entre Investimentos e Participações, and through consulting contracts between A&M Consultoria and Master and Reag, along with contracts with B6 Capital, an asset manager linked to the former mayor. For Rueda, besides cash, the document cites contracts between Master conglomerate companies and the law firm Rueda & Rueda Advogados that could add up to about R$ 3 million a month. Vorcaro also said Rueda took him to a meeting in Brasília in June 2024 with Paulo Henrique Costa, then president of BRB, the Bank of Brasília, and that one improper payment was to be split three ways among Rueda, Paulo Henrique and ACM Neto.

The figures do not match exactly. Vorcaro speaks of about R$ 2 billion raised with the politicians' help, but the four institutions cited invested about R$ 3.62 billion in total, according to banking records reported by Revista Fórum: Rioprevidência put in R$ 2.97 billion between 2023 and 2025; Amapá's Amprev, R$ 400 million; Cedae, R$ 200 million; and Amazonas's Amazonprev, R$ 50 million. The proposal does not explain the gap and does not name a specific act by either man inside the funds. Vorcaro says his account could be confirmed by João Carlos Mansur, owner of Reag, whose own plea deal includes an annex on ACM Neto recording an investment of R$ 7.9 million in a Reag-managed fund.

Antônio Rueda said he had no access to the document and denied any wrongdoing, stating that the contracts his firm signed with institutions tied to the case are lawful and that the services were provided. ACM Neto called the accusations "absurd, completely fanciful and false", said the proposal was never accepted, signed or ratified, and questioned the origin and authenticity of the published excerpts. Both men said they held no public office during the period, as reported by ICL Notícias.

The immediate future of the accusations depends on the plea deal itself. Rejected by the Federal Police and the PGR, it can only move forward through renewed talks, and Vorcaro is trying to reopen negotiations, according to ICL Notícias. In parallel, the full bench of the Supreme Federal Court, convened by Justice Edson Fachin, is scheduled to rule on 15 September on the inquiry into Moraes and Vorcaro, the backdrop against which the document resurfaced.