STF Lifts Secrecy on Banco Master Fraud Investigation
3 sources · Brazil
Who reported this
- UOL
- CNN Brasil
- Folha de S.Paulo
What the colours mean
- Left
- Centre-left
- Centre
- Centre-right
- Right
- A hatched block means the outlet is affiliated with, or controlled by, a state.
Political lean describes where an outlet sits within the politics of its own country. It is never a position on a single global scale.
Political lean is comparable inside one country and not across them, which is why the bar groups by country first. Publicly funded broadcasters are not marked as state-linked.
The owner of each outlet is listed as a matter of record, not as a judgement about the outlet.
Every source for this story reports from Brazil.
The Brazilian Supreme Federal Court (STF) has lifted the secrecy on documents related to a billion dollar fraud investigation involving Daniel Vorcaro, the owner of Banco Master. According to Federal Police investigations, the fraud totaled approximately 17 billion reais. The case involves allegations that Vorcaro and Paulo Henrique Costa, the former president of the Banco de Brasília (BRB), negotiated the purchase of bad credits and the acquisition of Banco Master by BRB in exchange for bribes. Paulo Henrique Costa is accused of receiving 146 million reais in real estate as a bribe. Both men are currently imprisoned.
Messages extracted by the Federal Police reveal discussions about adjusting rates to facilitate the purchase of assets and a relationship that investigators claim went beyond professional negotiations. In one exchange from March 2025, Vorcaro suggested they should move forward with the deal and fix documentation issues later. However, in a separate testimony given to the Federal Police in August 2026, Vorcaro denied offering advantages to agency employees or obtaining privileged information from the Central Bank.
The legal process has seen internal tension within the STF. Minister Edson Fachin and the Prosecutor General's Office (PGR) requested that all ministers have full access to the case files. Minister Alexandre de Moraes criticized Minister André Mendonça for making a selective choice of which materials to release, alleging that 180 documents were withheld. The released documents now include investigations into the funding of a film about former President Jair Bolsonaro, as well as inquiries involving other politicians including Cláudio Castro, Jaques Wagner, and Ciro Nogueira.
How each side framed it
- Centre-left
- This outlet focused on the defendant's denial of the allegations during his police testimony.
- Centre
- These outlets focused on the specific evidence of the fraud and the procedural conflicts among the Supreme Court ministers.
Sources
100% of the statements in this article were traced back to the source articles listed above.