Gonet Joins Case Against Mendonça Without Questioning Vorcaro’s ‘Debt of Gratitude’ to Moraes

The dispute over Justice André Mendonça’s measures against fellow Supreme Federal Court justice Alexandre de Moraes has placed Brazil’s prosecutor-general and the Prosecutor-General’s Office in the middle of the Master scandal, according to the article. It says the office’s statement condemned Mendonça while ignoring what it describes as new and serious evidence about Moraes, reported by Estadão.

The article argues that Paulo Gonet’s only way to recover credibility after confronting Mendonça would be to request his own investigation into the personal and financial ties between Moraes and former banker Daniel Vorcaro, as well as suspicions that those ties may involve crimes.

Instead, it says, the Prosecutor-General’s Office reduced the issue to technical and procedural questions. Its position was that Mendonça, although the case’s rapporteur, could not investigate Moraes without an external request or authorization from the full Supreme Federal Court. The article says this approach ignored the facts raised in the case.

It also points to messages seized by federal police from Vorcaro’s phones. Those messages mention trips, wine, cigars and the inclusion of Gonet’s son in what the article calls a series of indulgences. The text further claims that the prosecutor’s response is being viewed as part of a coordinated move with Moraes’s allies on a Supreme Court now divided between Mendonça, the investigator, and Moraes, the subject of investigation.

The article presents the allegations involving Moraes in stark terms. It says he met Vorcaro in São Paulo, that Moraes’s wife signed a R$131 million contract with the banker days later, and that Moraes was later pressed to intervene as problems mounted at Banco Master. According to the article, requests involved obtaining information and blocking measures against the bank and Vorcaro at the Central Bank, federal police and the Prosecutor-General’s Office. It warns that defending Moraes could bring greater public rejection of the Supreme Court and strengthen impeachment arguments in the Senate.