Pressure grows in Brazil for Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes to resign, implicated in a corruption case

The case shakes up politics in the country, in the midst of the campaign for the October presidential elections, in which President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is seeking reelection and competing almost head to head against right-wing senator Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former president Jair Bolsonaro.

State of Sao Paulo y Folha de Sao Paulotwo of the most influential newspapers, demanded in their editorials the resignation of De Moraes, known worldwide for supervising the process that led former President Bolsonaro to prison for coup plotting, or his dismissal by the Senate.

“There is no longer a place in the Supreme Court for Alexandre de Moraes. If the judge does not resign, it will be up to the Senate, through an impeachment process, to free the court from this burden,” he stated. Folha de São Paulo.

In the same line, State of Sao Paulo He maintained that De Moraes “is no longer in a position to continue” in the country’s highest judicial instance.

“An individual investigated for multimillion-dollar fraud sought from a magistrate information, guidance and intervention on actions of the Federal Police and the Attorney General’s Office, while his bank paid exorbitant sums to his family’s law firm, a contract that bears the signature of Moraes himself,” the newspaper summarized.

De Moraes has been affected by the ongoing investigations against Daniel Vorcaro, owner of Banco Master, an entity liquidated extrajudicially by the Central Bank of Brazil in November 2025 for million-dollar frauds in the financial system.

The case has been going on since then and has raised suspicions about senior representatives of the three powers, from Supreme Court judges to Central Bank officials and political leaders of various ideological currents.

This Tuesday, Supreme Court Judge André Mendonça, in charge of the case, lifted judicial secrecy, making public the preliminary investigations of the Police.

In this sense, the expertise of Vorcaro’s cell phone, currently in preventive detention, uncovered compromising messages allegedly sent to De Moraes, as well as million-dollar businesses, meetings and the offering of luxury experiences for him and his family.

Among these messages, Vorcaro asked for the “protection” of the Attorney General, Paulo Gonet, and the Director General of the Federal Police, Andrei Rodrigues, and even asked him, days before being arrested, if he should leave the country.

De Moraes’ responses are unknown, since, according to the investigation, he sent single-view messages and his cell phone has not been seized at any time.

Vorcaro was arrested for the first time on the night of November 17, 2025 in São Paulo while trying to leave Brazil on a private plane. Days later he was released, but returned to prison on March 4.

Furthermore, the Police maintain that De Moraes edited a service provision contract of 131 million reais (25.5 million dollars) between the law firm of his wife, Viviane Barci de Moraes, and the Master.

The Police identified, from the metadata of a document found on Vorcaro’s cell phone, that a user named “Minister Alexandre de Moraes” edited the text in 2024, which ended up being signed.

The Master then began making payments to Viviane Barci’s studio until November 2025, when Vorcaro was imprisoned.

André Mendonça has asked the plenary session of the Supreme Court, made up today of ten judges, including De Moraes, to analyze these latest revelations. The Prosecutor’s Office, headed by Gonet, has requested the annulment of the investigation.

Gonet has also been hit by scandal after the Police found messages between Vorcaro and a lawyer who apparently acted as a bridge between the attorney general and the banker.

This new chapter of the Banco Master scandal comes on the eve of the presidential elections on October 4.

De Moraes gained enormous international notoriety in the 2022 elections by combating misinformation and the campaign against Brazilian electronic ballot boxes promoted by the extreme right.

In 2024, he suspended the social network

He was also the instructor of the trial in which Bolsonaro was sentenced to 27 years in prison for coup plotting, which is why the Government of US President Donald Trump imposed financial sanctions on him.

Since then it has become the number one enemy of Bolsonarismwho has sought to associate his image with that of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.