Daniel Vorcaro, the former banker who owned the failed Banco Master, asked former Central Bank director Paulo Sérgio Neves de Souza to have the monetary authority pressure Caixa Econômica Federal, Brazil's giant state-owned bank, after technicians at its investment arm Caixa Asset were pushed out for opposing a R$ 500 million purchase of Master financial bills. The revelation comes from Folha de S.Paulo, which obtained messages exchanged between the two men on July 12, 2024.
"Can't the Central Bank ask Caixa to take a position?", Vorcaro wrote, according to the report. He then said he had already spoken to someone inside the state bank and suggested the wording of a statement: "They should issue a release saying they filed a criminal complaint over the leak of the report and that the report does not represent Caixa's opinion." One minute later, Paulo Sérgio replied: "We have already called on Caixa to include [the leak of internal information] in the investigation." About the damage the news could do to Master, Vorcaro summed it up: "The harm will be immense."
In the same exchange, the banker said Master had lost a R$ 400 million sale of ten-year financial bills to Amapá, money that would come from the pension fund of the northern state's public servants. "It was already signed, approved by the committee," he wrote. According to Folha, the investment ended up sliced into smaller pieces: on that same July 12, 2024, the five members of the investment committee of Amprev, the Amapá state pension fund, unanimously approved R$ 200 million in Master. On July 19 they approved another R$ 100 million, and on July 30 a further R$ 100 million, completing the R$ 400 million.
What was at stake
Had the purchase gone through, Caixa would today be among the creditors of Master, liquidated by the Central Bank on November 18, 2025, because financial bills (long-term bank bonds) are not covered by the FGC, Brazil's deposit guarantee fund. The goal of the deal, the report says, was to ease Vorcaro's bank liquidity crunch: with R$ 500 million in hand, Master could pay short-term obligations, while the bills sold to the state bank would only mature in ten years. Three Caixa Asset employees lost their posts in July 2024 after recommending against the transaction.
The episode remains under scrutiny on several fronts. Federal labor prosecutors opened an inquiry in March into the demotion of the three managers, identified as Leonardo Silva, Mariangela Fraga and Daniel Gracio, according to Jovem Pan. In October 2025, the TCU, Brazil's federal audit court, fined former Caixa Asset director Igor Macedo Laino R$ 10,000 for trying to push the purchase through; the case rapporteur, Antonio Anastasia, found that "relevant information" about Master had been omitted to "bias the decision-making." In a statement to Jovem Pan, Caixa said Caixa Asset "has absolute autonomy and governance" and does not retaliate against employees. Master's collapse has already forced the FGC to begin paying R$ 40.6 billion in guarantees to creditors, the largest rescue in the fund's history.
Reached by Folha, Paulo Sérgio's defense said the former director "never protected Daniel Vorcaro's interests and never received any undue or unlawful advantage because of his position." His lawyers argue he oversaw small and mid-sized banks in São Paulo and that dealings with Caixa were handled by the team that supervised the state bank. According to the defense, Paulo Sérgio accessed the Caixa Asset report only to check whether it contained findings relevant to the supervision of Banco Master. The Central Bank and Vorcaro's defense did not comment.