In a recent article on the Banco Master case, Bloomberg put together an informative network chart visualizing the connections involving Daniel Vorcaro, the former bank’s chief executive. Inspired by that, we decided to draw our own map, filling in some of the gaps we noticed from Bloomberg’s.
👉 Why it matters. Tracing Banco Master’s ties to Brazil’s main power brokers requires very few steps. As we reported last Friday, the prospect that Vorcaro could strike a plea deal and detail the political figures implicated in his alleged crimes is seen by politicians as an especially serious threat.
Who’s who in Vorcaro’s influence map:
Dias Toffoli is the Supreme Court justice to whom the Master investigation was controversially assigned. In December 2025, he traveled on a private jet to attend a football match in Peru, accompanied by a lawyer representing a Banco Master executive. Two of his brothers were partners in the Tayayá resort, which is linked to asset manager Reag and Banco Master.
Fabiano Zettel is Daniel Vorcaro’s brother-in-law, an evangelical pastor and the owner of investment funds managed by Reag. Those funds were used to purchase a stake in the Tayayá resort from two of Toffoli’s brothers. Zettel was temporarily detained by the Federal Police, which seized his passport and phone. He was the largest individual donor to the 2022 election campaigns of Jair Bolsonaro and São Paulo Governor Tarcísio de Freitas.
Toffoli’s brothers, José Carlos and José Eugênio, each held a stake in the Tayayá resort between 2020 and 2025. The press found that they live modestly in a small city in São Paulo state, hardly in line with the net worth of owners of a luxury resort.
Viviane Barci de Moraes is the wife of Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes. Her law firm reportedly held a three-year contract worth BRL 129 million to represent Banco Master beginning in January 2024.
Alexandre de Moraes, one of the Supreme Court’s most prominent justices, reportedly questioned Central Bank Chairman Gabriel Galípolo (who oversaw the Master liquidation) about the case. Moraes said the discussions concerned potential Magnitsky Act sanctions against him. The Central Bank confirmed meetings related to the sanctions but did not say they were limited to that subject.
The Supreme Court itself has come under scrutiny over the ties of Toffoli and Moraes to Banco Master, which also sponsored paid events featuring justices. There is growing pressure for the investigation to be sent to lower federal courts.
Tarcísio de Freitas, the São Paulo governor since 2022, served as infrastructure minister in the Bolsonaro administration and remains a close ally of the former president. His gubernatorial bid received BRL 2 million in campaign donations from Zettel in 2022.
Jair Bolsonaro, who served as president from 2019 to 2022, received BRL 3 million in campaign donations from Zettel.
Ciro Nogueira, a senator, who is a leading figure in the Big Center bloc and Bolsonaro’s former chief of staff. He is reported to have helped negotiate the Bank of Brasília’s attempt to rescue Master. He also introduced a bill that would have aided Master’s aggressive marketing of high-yield deposit certificates (CDBs) at the expense of Brazil’s deposit insurance fund (FGC).
Antonio Rueda, another Big Center leader and chairman of the União Brasil party, also reportedly assisted in negotiations between the Bank of Brasília and Master.
The Big Center, a loose coalition of right-of-center, patronage-driven parties. It includes several leaders and lawmakers with ties to Vorcaro and to the investigation.
One of those leaders, the Senate president, Davi Alcolumbre, is a dominant political figure in the northern state of Amapá, where the local government invested BRL 400 million in Master through its state pension fund.
Ibaneis Rocha is the governor of Brasília and as such oversees the Bank of Brasília, which is accused of attempting to purchase BRL 12.2 billion in fictitious loans from Banco Master in an effort to stabilize the private lender.
Augusto Lima, a former business partner of Vorcaro, was also targeted by investigators. He was briefly arrested, had his assets frozen and had BRL 1.7 million seized from his home. Politically well-connected, Lima founded Credcesta, a payroll-deduction loan company linked to Reag and implicated in a broader fraud scandal previously uncovered at Brazil’s National Social Security Institute (INSS).
Cláudio Castro is the governor of Rio de Janeiro and oversees a state pension fund that invested BRL 970 million in Banco Master’s financial products. His administration also drafted legislation that benefited Credcesta.
Reag Investimentos, an asset manager that has also been liquidated by the Central Bank, is under investigation for allegedly using financial instruments to launder money for the PCC, Brazil’s largest criminal organization. At least six investment funds linked to Banco Master and Reag are being investigated for suspected ties to organized crime.
Guido Mantega, a former finance minister and longtime ally of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, held a lucrative advisory contract with Banco Master and arranged a meeting between Vorcaro and Lula in December 2024.
Ricardo Lewandowski, a former Supreme Court justice, served as Lula’s justice minister between early 2024 and 2026. A law firm owned by members of his family was retained by Banco Master beginning in 2023, shortly after he retired from the court, and remained under contract through August 2025 — roughly a year and a half into his tenure overseeing the Justice Ministry, which supervises the Federal Police now investigating the bank.
Rui Costa, Lula’s chief of staff and a former governor of Bahia, oversaw the partial privatization of a state-owned supermarket chain in 2018. One of the buyers was Augusto Lima, a deal that helped him launch Credcesta.
This story is part of the Brazil Daily newsletter
