Brazil's institutional crisis gets a new live wire

The Senate hearings committee investigating organized crime rejected a final report that called for the indictment of three Supreme Court justices and the prosecutor general. The report cited the justices’ alleged ties to the fraudulent Banco Master — a lender liquidated by the Central Bank in November 2025 — and accused the prosecutor general of failing to act.

Thanks to a maneuver orchestrated by multiple centrist parties (and backed by the Lula administration), three committee members (including two from the opposition) were swapped out for government-aligned replacements, guaranteeing that the report would be rejected by a 6-4 majority. But while the report was voted down, the damage it produced remains.

The justices named in the report — Alexandre de Moraes, Dias Toffoli and Gilmar Mendes — reacted with fury. Mendes, the court's longest-tenured member, labeled the indictment recommendation a “historic error.” He has plans to file a criminal complaint for abuse of authority against Senator Alessandro Vieira, the report’s author. The complaint would be submitted to the Federal Prosecution Office, headed by the prosecutor general also targeted in the report.