Justice’s wife breaks silence on Master contract — raising more questions than answers

Back in December, newspaper O Globo reported that Banco Master — the now-liquidated bank implicated in a range of fraudulent schemes — had signed a contract worth BRL 129 million (USD 25 million) over three years with the law firm of Viviane Barci, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes. The figures prompted widespread speculation about whether the arrangement constituted a legitimate legal retainer, or something closer to influence-peddling.

Those suspicions gained new contours last week, after the Federal Police arrested Master's infamous CEO Daniel Vorcaro for a second time. In the days that followed, O Globo published a series of messages attributed to Vorcaro and Moraes, which the newspaper said were exchanged in November, on the same day the Master chief executive was first taken into federal custody. (He would be released 11 days later.)

Moraes denied the exchange, and his rebuttal suggested that the story originated from a congressional inquiry into pension-fund fraud that implicated Master (as lawmakers obtained data from Vorcaro’s phone). O Globo countered that its reporting relied on Federal Police forensic analysis, which verified the messages and found that Moraes's number had replied four times.