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Google searches for Moraes impeachment hit record
🇧🇷 Brazil /Elections & Politics

Google searches for Moraes impeachment hit record

From Estadão · () Portuguese

Translated from Portuguese and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

News Documents & data Ongoing story
  • Google searches in Brazil for the impeachment of Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes reached a record after reports detailed his contacts with Banco Master owner Daniel Vorcaro.
  • A Federal Police report cited 51 messages between Moraes and Vorcaro over 21 days, while investigators identified possible signs of corruption, influence peddling and administrative advocacy.
  • The report also described contracts involving Moraes's wife and credit cards issued to his children by Banco Master.

Searches for “impeachment Alexandre de Moraes” reached a record in Brazil on Wednesday morning, according to Google Trends data reviewed by Estadão’s Coluna do Estadão. The three most frequent searches about the Supreme Court justice mentioned banker Daniel Vorcaro, with whom Moraes exchanged 51 messages over 21 days, according to a Federal Police report sent to the Supreme Federal Court and disclosed by Estadão.

Specialists cited possible signs of corruption, influence peddling and administrative advocacy. The previous record for searches about Moraes’s impeachment came in September 2024, after the justice suspended social media platform X in Brazil and faced public attacks from its owner, Elon Musk. An earlier peak occurred in October 2022, when Moraes chaired Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court. Jair Bolsonaro, then president, had told allies he planned to seek Moraes’s impeachment if re-elected, but later backed away.

Messages extracted from Vorcaro’s cellphone indicated that he consulted Moraes about the risk of arrest and about the possibility that the Federal Police would launch the first phase of Operation Compliance Zero. On Nov. 15, 2025, Vorcaro asked, “Do you think I already need to be out of the country on Monday?” Two days later, police arrested him as he tried to board a private jet bound for Malta and then Dubai, where he planned to complete the sale of Banco Master. Investigators believed he was trying to leave Brazil to avoid arrest.

The report also said Banco Master issued credit cards with limits of 300,000 reais to Moraes’s children, Giuliana and Alexandre Barci de Moraes, in October 2025. The request came from the Barci de Moraes law firm, led by Moraes’s wife, Viviane Barci, who signed a 131 million reais contract with Vorcaro’s bank. Federal Police messages further indicated that Moraes edited the contract, while another 50 million reais agreement allegedly made Viviane Barci a partner in Vorcaro’s aircraft.

Do you think I already need to be out of the country on Monday?

— Daniel VorcaroThe Banco Master owner asked Moraes whether he should leave Brazil before his later arrest attempt.
About this summary

Originally published by Estadão in Portuguese. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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