BolsoMaster: Bolsonaro Ties to Brazil’s Biggest Banking Fraud in History Exposed
Daniel Bueno Vorcaro. X/ @revistaforum
By: Brian Mier
May 14, 2026 Hour: 2:50 pm
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Audio files revealed by Intercept Brasil show Flavio Bolsonaro asking jailed banker for R$134 million.
On Wednesday, May 13, The Intercept Brasil released a series of audio and text messages exchanged between far-right presidential hopeful Flavio Bolsonaro, son of jailed ex-President Jair Bolsonaro, and Daniel Vorcaro.
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Vorcaro is the former owner of Banco Master, which collapsed and folded on November 18, 2025, in the midst of a scandal involving defrauding 800,000 investors of approximately $2.3 billion in toxic financial assets.
Vorcaro, who was known for his lavish lifestyle, was arrested in March 2026. The released conversations show that he had agreed to give Bolsonaro R$134 million to help finance a movie about his father.
They show that, after delivering R$61 million, he halted the payments. The conversations reveal a series of requests by Flavio for the rest of the money, which continued until the day before Vorcaro was arrested.
Earlier this year when the Banco Master scandal first broke, the Bolsonaro coalition worked through its network of paid far-right influencers to weaponize it against President Lula.
Brazil’s mainstream media, which has decades of experience slinging mud at Lula, jumped in line. Globo, Brazil’s largest media organization, was so widely ridiculed for airing a PowerPoint slide with no accompanying evidence on its cable news network that showed Lula as being the central figure in the scandal, that it apologized the next day and removed its news director.
As the investigation advanced, however, the far right grew silent. On May 7, Federal Police raided the residence of Jair Bolsonaro’s former Chief of Staff, Ciro Nogueira. The investigation was getting closer and closer to the Bolsonaro family.
After the audio leaked yesterday, Flavio Bolsonaro spent hours consulting with political advisors, then released a statement framing it as an issue of laissez-faire-style economic freedom. “In our case (using the royal we),” he said, “all that happened was that a son was looking for PRIVATE sponsorship for a PRIVATE film about the history of his own father.”
The argument falls short when the relationship between his father’s government and Banco Master is scrutinized, as PT Congressman Paulo Pimenta pointed out in a speech in Congress that day.
Banco Maxima, the predecessor to Banco Master, lost its operating license in 2016. In 2017 and 2018, bids to enable it to restart operations were rejected by President Michel Temer’s Central Bank. The license was finally granted shortly after Jair Bolsonaro’s Central Bank President, Roberto Campos Neto, took power in late 2019, and it changed its name to Banco Master.
Afterwards, the Bolsonaro administration issued it a license make predatory loans from retirees and deduct payments directly from their retirement pension checks.
A few months later, the administration increased licensed lending institutions to increase their maximum deduction from retirement pension checks to 40%. In 2021, Banco Master started offering dividends on certificates of deposit significantly higher than market rates that were insured by the Central Bank.
In 2022, Daniel Vorcaro’s brother-in-law, Fernando Vettel, was the largest campaign donor to Jair Bolsonaro and São Paulo gubernatorial candidate Tarcisio de Freitas. Shortly afterwards, Bolsonaro’s Chief of Staff, Ciro Nogueira tried to push a bill through congress to increase federal government insurance of certificates of deposit from R$250,000 to R$1 million.
In order to learn what this new scandal means for the Bolsonaro family, I spoke with award-winning political journalist Joaquim de Carvalho. Currently an editor at Brasil 247, during Carvalho’s 44-year career he has worked as a print and television reporter and in editorial positions for Estado de São Paulo, Globo, Band, SBT, and Record.
How has Intercept Brazil’s publishing of audio conversations and other messages between Flavio Bolsonaro and Daniel Vorcaro changed the public perception of the Banco Master scandal? The Banco Master scandal is now reaching the truly responsible parties.
Who are these responsible parties?
They are people who governed Brazil between January 1, 2019, and December 31, 2022, when the president was Jair Bolsonaro. Banco Master was authorized to operate toward the end of 2019. Daniel Vorcaro had bought another bank, but he wasn’t authorized to be the owner of Banco Master until that date.
At that point, the name was changed. It was originally called Maxima and became Master, but he should have never been authorized to run it in the first place. During the previous administration, under Michel Temer, the Central Bank did not authorize Banco Maxima’s transfer to his name.
One of the arguments made by the Central Bank at the time was that it could generate a reputational crisis. That was the argument and, as it turns out, that is what eventually happened.
Daniel Vorcaro reapplied after Roberto Campos Neto was appointed by Jair Bolsonaro to head the Central Bank, and he authorized it. So Banco Master began operating during the first year of Bolsonaro’s presidency.
Former Minister of Finance Fernando Haddad, who is the person who first discovered and reported Banco Master’s crimes, defines its activities as the biggest banking fraud in Brazil’s history.
What is happening to the investigation now?
We have strong evidence of the involvement of Ciro Nogueira, who was Jair Bolsonaro’s last Chief of Staff. He’s a veteran politician linked to the Centrão, a conservative, powerful, and opportunistic parliamentary group that spans multiple political parties whose only ideology seems to be seeking personal and economic advantages for itself.
Federal Police have discovered that Nogueira received personal benefits from Daniel Vorcaro: an apartment, paid trips, and a monthly allowance that started at R$300,000 and later grew to R$500,000 a month.
In exchange for these favors he put his mandate at Daniel Vorcaro’s service. Evidence gathered by the Federal Police shows that Daniel Vorcaro himself drafted a bill and sent it to Ciro Nogueira, to his luxury apartment.
In this draft, which Ciro Nogueira submitted to Congress word for word, there was an increase in the Federal Government’s insured guarantee for investments in Certificados de Deposito Bancario (CDBs/certificates of deposit).
The text reads, “Brazilian politics is not for amateurs. Presidential candidate Flavio Bolsonaro was caught negotiating bribes with Daniel Vorcaro of Banco Master to finance a film about his father, Jair Bolsonaro. His candidacy ended today.”
How do CDBs work in Brazil?
They are bank securities that are sold, and legislation stipulates that the government insures up to R$250,000 through a mechanism called the Credit Guarantee Fund (Fundo Garantidor de Credito/FGC).
If you buy R$250,000 worth of these CDs from any banking institution and it goes bankrupt, the insurance kicks in and you get your money back, up to R$250,000. What Ciro Nogueira did with this legislative bill that was drafted by Daniel Vorcaro and his team was to attempt to increase this limit from R$250,000 to R$1 million.
In other words, this fraud, which left a shortfall of R$47 billion for the FGC when Banco Master collapsed, could have been much larger, and Daniel Vorcaro himself could have continued doing exactly what he is now being accused of: raising funds and rerouting over US $1 billion into clandestine accounts. This is what the Federal Police is investigating.
They have even attempted to negotiate a plea bargain with him, in which he would return part of that money. However, all indications show that this plea bargain deal was not accepted because Vorcaro tried to protect too many people, including Ciro Nogueira himself.
The Federal Police discovered the relationship between Ciro Nogueira and Daniel Vorcaro on their own because Vorcaro said the opposite and protected him. That’s a fact.
How will the release of the audio messages between Flavio Bolsonaro and Daniel Vorcaro change the investigation?
As I said, the Master scandal is approaching the truly responsible parties. The most important thing that has changed is that yesterday, based on a report published here in Brazil by The Intercept that includes several audio recordings and text messages, there is evidence showing 2026 presidential pre-candidate Flavio Bolsonaro demanding R$134 million from Daniel Vorcaro.
We learn from this exchange of messages that, only a few months ago, Vorcaro had agreed to secretly sponsor, without Banco Master’s name appearing in public (this is important) a film that was supposed to be used in his presidential campaign.
It’s a movie that will be called Dark Horse that is already in post-production, featuring American actors including Jim Caviezel, the actor who played Christ in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ.
This film was scheduled to be released this September. It would be a film shown in movie theaters with a political purpose, to boost Flavio Bolsonaro’s candidacy because it would be released only a few weeks before the presidential elections.
September is the month of that episode in Juiz de Fora in which Flavio’s father, jailed ex-President Jair Bolsonaro, was hospitalized after being stabbed by Adelio Bispo de Oliveira. That episode is supposed to be the climax in Dark Horse.
Of course, the trailer and everything would promote that stabbing episode, which by Bolsonaro’s own admission is responsible for his winning the election because it triggered a huge spike in the polls.
His boost in the polls was such that he no longer needed to participate in debates and ended up winning the election. So it would be a piece of propaganda. This alone could characterize abuse of economic power during election season, in violation of Brazil’s election laws.
What else is revealed in the audio?
The messages show that a portion of the money Flavio demanded, about $2 million, was definitely sent through one of Daniel Vorcaro’s shell companies to a company based in Eduardo Bolsonaro’s adopted home of Texas. This company, whose administrator or agent in charge is called REAG, has an account in Texas. And who is the Texas agent who manages that account, who is responsible for it? A lawyer named Paulo Calisto – Eduardo Bolsonaro’s lawyer.
Why is a lawyer from another company involved in this film? What is his relation to this film? And there’s another important fact: the actual producer of the film said she received no funds from Daniel Vorcaro or from any of his companies. In other words the sponsorship was clandestine. This is evidence of possible money laundering.
This suspicion is reinforced by one of the messages revealed by The Intercept, which shows that Daniel Vorcaro’s Banco Master would not appear as a sponsor. It wouldn’t even be credited for institutional support. It simply wouldn’t be listed anywhere. This strengthens the suspicion that it was actually money laundering.
What draws attention in this case, and this has been commented on in the Brazilian media and is clear from all these messages, is the work of the Federal Police. The Supreme Court minister supervising this Federal Police investigation is Andre Mendonça, who was appointed by Jair Bolsonaro.
So now the big question is whether Andre Mendonça act autonomously and independently. He has this opportunity to show that he is truly seeking justice. Because the audio reveals Flavio Bolsonaro asking for advantages from a corrupt banker the day before he was arrested. One of the messages was sent the day before Vorcaro’s arrest.
Now we will see how independent Andre Mendonça really is. When Jair Bolsonaro appointed him to the court he called him “terribly evangelical.” And indeed, Andre Mendonça is an evangelical Christian. But now his independence will be tested. Because, in light of this revelation, what is the natural course of action?
The Federal Police should be granted full access to Flavio Bolsonaro’s bank, tax, and communications information. Flavio Bolsonaro is a senator and is Jair Bolsonaro’s son, and it’s public knowledge that he influenced some of his father’s decisions when he was president.
So in the coming days we will be able to assess whether Andre Mendonça will do what is required of a judge following a request, whether from the Federal Police or from the Attorney General. We will find out how independent he is if and when he is called upon — and the logic of the investigation points in this direction — to authorize a breach of Flavio Bolsonaro’s private records.
Author: Brian Mier
Source: De-Linking Brazil
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