By Lisandra Paraguassu and Ricardo Brito
BRASILIA, March 13 (Reuters) - For years Daniel Vorcaro was best known in Brazil’s financial world as the head of Banco Master, a bank whose breakneck expansion left some analysts puzzled.
Less noticed during Master's ascent was Vorcaro's ability to build a contact book that included Supreme Court justices, the heads of Brazil's Senate and House, and top officials in the country’s central bank.
But after Vorcaro was arrested last week for the second time for his role in an alleged multibillion-dollar fraud scheme, the contents of his cellphone, leaked by lawmakers who obtained files from a Federal Police investigation, revealed a spider web of influence which could embarrass some of the nation's top power brokers in an election year.
The case is a ticking time bomb, said Senator Alessandro Vieira, who is pushing for a congressional inquiry into Vorcaro's relationship with Supreme Court justices.
“There are very powerful figures in the Republic with clear involvement,” said Vieira, whose party is part of the ruling coalition.
Some are already facing scrutiny. Two central bank officials were pushed out of their roles when regulators found they had been advising Vorcaro. Supreme Court Justice Dias Toffoli stepped down from overseeing a Federal Police investigation into the fraud case after the Brazilian press revealed his family's company had financial links to the banker. Toffoli said in a statement at the time that he never received any payments from Master or Vorcaro.
In July, as Vorcaro worked to save his bank from liquidation, he vented to his girlfriend in a text message that “this bank business ... is just like the mafia," one of several occasions when he suggested that the country's dominant lenders were out to get Master.
Federal Police investigators found text messages that suggest Vorcaro plotted to intimidate people he viewed as foes, including a journalist, with the help of an associate he called "Sicario," as hit men employed by Mexican drug cartels are known, according to the leaked files.
Vorcaro's lawyers denied, in a statement, that Vorcaro had committed any irregularities or fraud, intimidated journalists, coopted public agents, or took any action to interfere with law‑enforcement work.
AN UNSUSTAINABLE BUSINESS MODEL
Vorcaro, 42, got his start in his family's real estate business. His rapid rise in finance began when he bought a troubled bank, rebranded as Banco Master in 2021, initially used to finance property developments.
His lack of a track record in banking and preference for open‑collar shirts without a tie set him apart from the buttoned-up world of Brazil's financial sector.
But what Master was selling drew scrutiny.
The bank's debt securities offered above-average returns as the bank invested in extremely risky assets, such as payouts in lawsuits against the government, which can take years to materialize.
Master's biggest calling card was that its deposits were covered by the Credit Guarantee Fund, which is financed with mandatory contributions from banks.
But when regulators tightened rules in 2023 on the capital required to support securities backed by legal payouts, the bank faced a liquidity crisis.
Vorcaro promised regulators he would raise $3 billion in the following year to address the problem.
In a 2025 deposition, Vorcaro blamed an ensuing "reputational campaign against the bank" as well as anticompetitive behavior by Brazil's top banks for his failure to stem the crisis.
Even as Master was teetering, documents obtained in the police investigation, seen by Reuters, show he also spent millions of dollars on events that seemed designed to cement his access to the country's political elite.
In April 2024, for example, he funded a $6 million "ideas forum" in London that attracted luminaries including Supreme Court justices and the head of the Federal Police. The event closed with a $640,000 tasting of Macallan whisky, the documents show.
Vorcaro separately hired the wife of Brazil's most powerful Supreme Court justice, Alexandre de Moraes, as the bank's lawyer. In a statement, the office of Viviane Barci de Moraes detailed several services it performed for the bank, but stressed that it never represented it in the Supreme Court.
Another adviser, former finance minister Guido Mantega, helped the banker arrange a December meeting with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and the head of Brazil's central bank to discuss what he described as his struggle against big banks. Mantega did not reply to a request for comment.
In an interview with news website UOL last month, Lula said he told Vorcaro that there would be no political interference in his bank's case, but "a technical investigation conducted by the central bank."
Reuters confirmed the president's account with an official who was present at the meeting.
Vorcaro's underdog narrative has at times clashed with descriptions of an extravagant lifestyle.
A party he threw for his girlfriend in Saint-Tropez, France in 2025, flying more than 30 guests in private jets, drew particular attention.
Documents reviewed by Reuters show Vorcaro spent at least $120 million on luxurious trips and parties between 2024 and April 2025. The provenance of those funds remains unclear.
'DID YOU MANAGE TO BLOCK IT?'
For a medium-sized bank with 80 billion reais ($15 billion) in assets, regulators would expect Master to have liquidity of 3 billion or 4 billion reais in unencumbered securities, Ailton de Aquino Santos, a central bank official, told the police in a deposition, or about $530 million to $700 million.
But regulators examining its books in 2024 found that Master only had 4 million reais in cash, he said.
Vorcaro and his allies tried many avenues to keep the bank alive after regulators flagged the liquidity problems, including raising hundreds of millions of dollars from public servants' pension funds, lobbying for congressional relief and finally trying to sell Master to a state-owned bank.
None of that seemed to work.
In November, investigation documents suggest Vorcaro was texting an unidentified number in what seemed like a final effort to stave off disaster: "Did you manage to block it?" one of the messages said.
Vorcaro was arrested that night at an airport in Sao Paulo. Police have said they believe he wanted to flee the country. The central bank liquidated Master the next day. A judge later freed him, but police arrested him again last week, arguing he was interfering with the investigation.
Weeks later, newspaper O Globo reported the texts Vorcaro exchanged on the day of his arrest had been sent to Justice de Moraes, which the judge denies.
Still, Vorcaro's political reach has many in Brasilia worried about whether others might be implicated in the investigations, Vieira said.
"Facts influence politics," he said. And the facts, he added, "are very alarming, it's impossible to hide them."
($1 = 5.1792 reais)
(Reporting by Lisandra Paraguassu and Ricardo Brito in Brasilia, Marcela Ayres and Bernardo Caram contributed reporting from Brasilia, writing by Manuela Andreoni; Editing by Christian Plumb and Alistair Bell)
