The banker most feared by the Bolsonaros and other power brokers in Brasília is looking for ways to fill the hours of the day, which in a prison cell always feel longer than in freedom. The routine of recent weeks—meetings from nine to five with his lawyers—has ended. Together they had mapped out a bargaining strategy with the Federal Police and the Prosecutor’s Office for what in Brazil is called a delação premiada. That is, a broad, detailed confession that names accomplices and hands over evidence in exchange for a reduced sentence. But in recent days both institutions have rejected the second attempt at a confession by Daniel Vorcaro, the owner of Banco Master, which the authorities liquidated months ago.
They believe he offers no new information, that the agents already know what he was offering to disclose. They believe the defendant, the prime suspect in one of Brazil’s largest frauds, remains intent on protecting third parties. In his downfall, Vorcaro and Banco Master left an estimated hole of 50 billion reais ($10 billion) and many thousands of victims, including public pension funds.
The banker—a man who paid large sums to politicians of every stripe to avoid his bank being shut down for lack of liquidity, who invested $10 million in a biopic about Jair Bolsonaro, who had a multimillion-dollar contract with the law firm of a Supreme Court judge’s wife, who hosted jaw-dropping parties abroad—clings to his secrets. Brazil’s powerful are breathing a sigh of relief. For now.
Vorcaro still enjoys a certain privilege tied to negotiating a confession. He is being held at the Brasília police station where Bolsonaro senior began serving his sentence. The judge must now decide whether to send him to prison; in any case it would not be one of those overcrowded, crumbling facilities run by organized crime. Even in jail, Brazil’s inequality shows: he would go to a high-security prison.
Without access to television, Vorcaro whiles away the hours in his cell with the Bible, biographies or a book on financial-market crises, his associates told O Globo. It has also emerged that he considers himself innocent and denies having committed any wrongdoing. The fact is he founded and ran Banco Master, known for the very high interest rates it offered customers. Authorities liquidated it last November for lack of funds.
The Master scandal has exploded in the face of Flávio Bolsonaro, the right’s leading presidential candidate. The senator and son of the former president has fallen in the polls since it emerged that he did know the banker Vorcaro, a fact that he had denied. And there’s more: when the banker was still free but troubles were surfacing, he invested $10 million in the film Dark Horse, a biopic about the political career of former president Jair Bolsonaro. That makes the Hollywood-style production one of Brazil’s most expensive films ever, and heightens suspicions of corruption and, in particular, illicit financing against the Bolsonaro family. “They’ve created a new genre of fiction, haven’t they? Asking a banker for money to make an anti-system film,” a member of the Audit Court quipped in Folha.
Vorcaro and Banco Master burst onto the financial scene with unusual force and, in a few years, carried out a major expansion. Meanwhile, the businessman and investor paid for ultra-luxurious parties for his teenage daughter—her 15th birthday on a private island in the Bahamas—and events tailored to the who’s who of Congress and the judiciary, such as cigars and whisky at one of London’s most stately, exclusive clubs. Evidence suggests that, to hide from inspectors scrutinizing his accounts, he sought protection from powerful figures.
Tax information about Banco Master, cited in a parliamentary inquiry commission, reveals it made multimillion-dollar payments for various consulting services to a former president, to a former minister who introduced Vorcaro to President Lula, and to the wife of Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes; Viviane Moraes runs the family law firm that signed a $25 million, three-year contract with the bank. According to police, the entity also covered luxury stays for the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Hugo Motta, and for one of the main center-right politicians, Ciro Nogueira.
A year before the institution was liquidated by the authorities, Vorcaro secured a meeting with President Lula at Planalto Palace in an off-agenda encounter.
Police continue to analyze several mobile phones seized from Vorcaro, who was arrested just as he was about to board a private jet to flee abroad. Both the police and the prosecutor’s office keep the door open for a third negotiated confession—provided it is accompanied by previously unknown information and compelling evidence. Vorcaro has many spare hours ahead to read and reflect.
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