Brazil Unsealed Thousands of Banco Master Pages—Now Its Supreme Court Is Fighting Over the Probe

Brazil’s Supreme Court has opened a vault of records from the Banco Master investigation—just as the case is pulling the country’s most powerful judges into an extraordinary public confrontation.

Chief Justice Edson Fachin ordered thousands of pages unsealed on Thursday, September 10, and Justice André Mendonça quickly complied. The records belong to an expanding investigation into alleged multibillion-dollar fraud centered on the failed bank, a case that has reached central-bank officials, politicians and members of the Supreme Court itself, according to Reuters.

The release does not settle the allegations. It does something almost as consequential: it gives Brazil a much larger view of a case that has already disrupted the federal police, divided the country’s top court and entered an unusually close presidential campaign.

Fifteen proceedings, thousands of pages

Brazilian outlet UOL reported that Mendonça lifted secrecy from the main petition that led to former Banco Master chief executive Daniel Vorcaro’s arrest and 14 related proceedings. Fachin had asked for the case material to be made public except where secrecy remained essential to active investigative work.

The newly accessible files cover several branches of the inquiry, including Banco Master’s relationship with BRB, alleged leaks of confidential central-bank information and investigations into networks suspected of intimidation, cyberattacks and coordinated online messaging. Other portions remain sealed, including some matters involving politicians.

That distinction matters. “Unsealed” does not mean every claim has been proven, nor does it mean every file is public. It means evidence, police analyses, contracts, messages and legal arguments that had been hidden from general view can now be scrutinized by journalists, lawyers, lawmakers and the public.

The contracts drawing the most attention

Among the documents published on the court’s website were contracts connected to the law office of Viviane Barci de Moraes, the wife of Justice Alexandre de Moraes. Folha de S.Paulo reported that one signed 2024 agreement contemplated R$131 million in payments over three years for legal services, compliance work and strategic consulting involving agencies including the federal police, central bank and tax authority.

A second proposal involving another Vorcaro-linked company contemplated R$50 million after taxes, Folha reported. The law office said that proposal was not accepted or signed.

The firm has denied wrongdoing. It said the Banco Master agreement did not call for work before the Supreme Court, that Alexandre de Moraes had not judged a Banco Master case, and that the legal services were performed. The firm said its relationship with the bank ended when the institution was liquidated in 2025.

Those defenses are central to the public record. The existence and value of a contract may raise questions, but they are not by themselves proof that a judge acted improperly.

A judicial dispute became a national crisis

The Supreme Court’s conflict burst into the open after Mendonça released police documents on September 1 showing that Vorcaro repeatedly sought legal advice from Moraes, according to The Associated Press. Calls followed for an investigation into whether Moraes acted as an adviser to the banker.

Moraes then accused Mendonça of abusing his authority and sought an inquiry into Mendonça’s handling of the matter. The dispute spilled into the leadership of Brazil’s federal police: competing court decisions removed and then reinstated its director-general before Fachin intervened.

The court canceled two consecutive deliberation sessions, a rare step, and Fachin directed that decisions involving Supreme Court members pass through the court presidency. He scheduled an extraordinary full-court session for Tuesday, September 15.

That session is expected to address the allegations about Moraes’ relationship with Vorcaro and a request from Brazil’s prosecutor-general to invalidate a federal-police report on procedural grounds. The 10-member bench will effectively have to decide how the court investigates allegations involving one of its own while also policing the conduct of the justice overseeing the inquiry.

Why the timing raises the stakes

Brazil votes in October. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and right-wing Senator Flávio Bolsonaro are locked in a tight contest, and figures on both sides appear in different parts of the broader political story surrounding Banco Master.

Lula backed transparency before the unsealing order, telling broadcaster SBT, “I am in favor of opening everything,” Reuters reported. Bolsonaro’s supporters, meanwhile, have tried to connect Lula politically to Moraes, who pursued former President Jair Bolsonaro over a 2023 coup plot and secured his conviction last year.

That makes the released pages both evidence and political ammunition. Facts that emerge from them could damage one camp, several camps—or confidence in institutions across the board.

What happens next

The immediate date to watch is September 15, when the full court meets. The justices will face questions larger than any single contract or message: who has authority to investigate a sitting justice, which evidence can legally be used, what must remain sealed and how the court can restore credibility while judging itself.

The document release is not a verdict. But it ensures that a controversy once contained in confidential files will now unfold in public, during the most politically sensitive weeks on Brazil’s calendar.